Francesco Maria Piave (18 May 18105 March 1876) was an Italian opera librettist who was born in Murano in the lagoon of Venice, during the brief Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy.

Career Piave's career spanned over twenty years working with many of the significant composers of his day, including Giovanni Pacini (four librettos), Saverio Mercadante (at least one), Federico Ricci, and even one for Michael Balfe. He is most known for his collaborations with Giuseppe Verdi, for whom he was to write 10 librettos, the best known being those for Rigoletto and La traviata.

But Piave was not only a librettist: he was a journalist and translator in addition to being the resident poet and stage manager at La Fenice in Venice where he first encountered Verdi. Later, Verdi was helpful in securing him the same position at La Scala in Milan.Baldini 1970, pp. 70 - 74 His expertise as a stage manager and his tact as a negotiator served Verdi very well, but the composer bullied him mercilessly for his pains over many years.

Like Verdi, Piave was an ardent Italian patriot, and in 1848, during Milan's "Cinque Giornate," when Radetzky's Austrian troops retreated from the city, Verdi wrote to Piave in Venice addressing him as "Citizen Piave."

Together, they worked on ten operas between 1844 and 1862, and Piave would have also prepared the libretto for Aida when Verdi accepted the commission for it in 1870, had he not suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed and unable to speak. Verdi helped to support his wife and daughter, proposing that "an album of pieces by famous composers be compiled and sold for Piave's benefit".Werfel and Stefan 1973, p. 262, referring to a letter of 1 August 1869 from Verdi to publisher Léon Escudier requesting him to furnish his own contribution to the album The composer paid for his funeral when he died nine years later in Milan aged 65 and arranged for his burial at the Monumental Cemetery.

Piave's librettos for Verdi From the beginnings of their working relationship in 1844, scholars such as Gabriele Baldini see Verdi's overall influence upon the structure of his work take a big leap forward when he notes: Working with Piave was Verdi's first opportunity to work with himself. [...] The composer completely dominates and enslaves the librettist, who becomes scarcely more than an instrument in his hands...[Piave's] libretti are in fact those best suited to Verdi's music [....] simply because, in detail as well as in general shape, Verdi himself composed them.

This statement suggests that, almost for the first time, the composer was going to be the one who determined "that drama essentially consisted of the arrangement of pieces and the clarity of the musical forms..[so that]..he began to become aware of the structure and architecture of musical composition, something which was not even clearly hinted at during the period with Solera. The composer began to control the overall dramatic arc of the drama and no longer would he "suffer under" such librettists as Temistocle Solera, who wrote the libretti for five Verdi operas beginning with Oberto and up to Attila in 1846.

An example of the pressure which Verdi exerted on Piave was in the struggle to have the Venetian censors approve Rigoletto: "Turn Venice upside down to make the censors permit this subject"Verdi to Piave, 6 May 1850, in Phillips-Matz 1993, p. 265 he demanded, following that up with the admonition not to allow the matter to drag on: "If I were the poet I would be very, very concerned, all the more because you would be greatly responsible if by chance (may the Devil not make it happen) they should not allow this drama [to be staged]".Verdi to Piave, 29 November 1850, in Phillips-Matz 1993, p. 270

Another Verdi scholar notes that "Verdi always harried him unmercifully, often having his work revised by others [but] Piave rewarded him with doglike devotion, and the two remained on terms of sincere friendship."Black 1998, p. 999 Piave became "someone Verdi loved".Phiilips-Matz 1993, p. 644

In following Salvadore Cammarano as Verdi's main mid-career librettist, Piave firstly wrote Ernani in 1844, and then I due Foscari (1844), Attila (1846), Macbeth (the 1847 first version), Il Corsaro (1848), Stiffelio (1850), Rigoletto (1851), La traviata (1853), Simon Boccanegra (the 1857 first version), Aroldo (1857), La forza del destino (the 1862 first version), and Macbeth (the 1865 second version).

Librettos by Piave Year TitleList of operas for which Piave wrote the libretto taken from opera.stanford.edu Retrieved 9 September 2013 Composer 1842 Il duca d'Alba (Libretto also used by Giovanni Peruzzini) 1844 Ernani 1844 I due Foscari 1845 Lorenzino de' Medici 1846 Attila 1846 Estella di Murcia 1847 Griselda 1847 Macbeth (first version) 1847 Tutti amanti 1848 Allan Cameron 1848 Giovanna di Fiandra 1848 Il corsaro 1848 Il campo de' crociati 1850 Crispino e la comare and Federico Ricci 1850 Elisabetta di Valois 1850 Stiffelio 1851 La Sposa di Murçia 1851 Rigoletto 1853 Baschina 1853 La donna delle isole 1853 La prigioniera 1853 La traviata 1854 Margherita di Borgogna 1854 Pittore e Duca 1856 I Fidanzati 1857 Simon Boccanegra (first version) 1857 Aroldo (revision of Stiffelio) 1857 Vittore Pisani 1859 Margherita la mendicante 1860 La Biscaglina 1861 Guglielmo Shakspeare 1862 La forza del destino (first version) 1862 Mormile 1862 Rienzi 1865 La Duchessa di Guisa 1865 Macbeth (second version) 1865 Rebecca 1867 Berta di Varnol 1867 Don Diego de Mendoza 1868 La tombola 1872 Olema

Filmography , directed by Vincenzo Sorelli (1938) , directed by Carmine Gallone (1946) , directed by Carmine Gallone (1947) The Force of Destiny, directed by Carmine Gallone (1950) Rigoletto e la sua tragedia, directed by Flavio Calzavara (1956) , directed by Mario Lanfranchi (1968) Rigoletto, directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (1982) La Traviata, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (1983) Macbeth, directed by Claude d'Anna (1987) Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto Story, directed by Gianfranco Fozzi (2005)

References Notes

Sources Baldini, Gabriele (1970), (trans. Roger Parker, 1980), The Story of Giuseppe Verdi: Oberto to Un Ballo in Maschera. Cambridge, et al: Cambridge University Press. Black, John (1998), "Piave, Francesco Maria" in Stanley Sadie, (Ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. Three, pp. 999. London: Macmillan Publishers, Inc. Budden, Julian (1996), Verdi. New York: Schirmer Books (Master Musicians Series). Kimball, David (2001), in Holden, Amanda (Ed.), The New Penguin Opera Guide, New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001. O'Grady, Deidre (2000), Piave, Boito, Pirandello: From Romantic Realism to Modernism (Studies in Italian Literature). Edwin Mellon Press. Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane (1993), Verdi: A Biography, London & New York: Oxford University Press. Werfel, Franz and Stefan, Paul (1973), Verdi: The Man and His Letters, New York: Vienna House.

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