Francesco Maria Piave
Francesco Maria Piave (18 May 1810 – 5 March 1876) was an Italian opera librettist who was born in Murano in the lagoon of Venice, during the brief Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. His career spanned over twenty years working with many of the significant composers of his day. In addition to Giuseppe Verdi, for whom he was to write 10 librettos, other composers include Giovanni Pacini (four librettos), Saverio Mercadante (at least one), Federico Ricci, even one for Michael Balfe.
Career
Piave was not only a librettist, but a journalist and translator. He was resident poet and stage manager at La Fenice in Venice, and later at La Scala in Milan. His expertise as a stage manager and his tact as a negotiator served Verdi well over the years, who bullied him mercilessly for his pains. For example, in the struggle to have the Venetian censor(s) approve Rigoletto, he goaded Piave: "Turn Venice upside down to make the censors permit this subject"[1] He followed this 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][2]
But Piave nonetheless became Verdi's lifelong friend and collaborator, "someone Verdi loved",[3] following Salvadore Cammarano as Verdi's main mid-career librettist for Ernani (1844), I due Foscari (1844), Attila (1846), Macbeth (first version 1847), Il Corsaro (1848), Stiffelio (1850), Rigoletto (1851), La traviata (1853) Simon Boccanegra (first version 1857) and La forza del destino (first version 1862). 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."
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"[4] and paid for his funeral when he died nine years later in Milan at age 65 and was interred there in the Cimitero Monumentale.
Librettos by Piave
References
Notes
- ^ Letter to Piave, 6 May 1850, quoted in Phillips-Matz, p. 265
- ^ Verdi to Piave, in Phillips-Matz, p. 270
- ^ Phiilips-Matz, p. 644
- ^ Werfel and Stefan, 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,
- ^ List from opera.stanford.edu Retrieved 27 November 2010
Sources
- O'Grady, Deidre, Piave, Boito, Pirandello: From Romantic Realism to Modernism (Studies in Italian Literature). Edwin Mellon Pess, 2000. ISBN 978-0-7734-7703-2 ISBN 0-7734-7703-9
- Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane, Verdi: A Biography, London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 ISBN 0-19-313204-4
- Werfel, Franz and Stefan, Paul, Verdi: The Man and His Letters, New York: Vienna House 1973 ISBN 0-8443-0088-8
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