Francesco Maria Piave

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Francesco Maria Piave

Francesco Maria Piave (18 May 1810Template:Spnd5 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.[1] 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."

A marble gravestone on the wall of a crypt
Piave's grave at the Monumental Cemetery of Milan

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".[2] 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.[1]

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.[1] The composer began to control the overall dramatic arc of the drama and no longer would he "suffer under"[1] such librettists as Temistocle Solera, who wrote the libretti for five Verdi operas beginning with Oberto and up to Attila in 1846.

File:Piave caricature.jpg
Caricature of Piave as "a theatrical jack-of-all-trades", after 1861

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"[3] 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]".[4]

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."[5] Piave became "someone Verdi loved".[6]

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 Title[7] Composer
1842 Il duca d'Alba Script error: No such module "Sort".
(Libretto also used by Giovanni Peruzzini)
1844 Ernani Script error: No such module "Sort".
1844 I due Foscari Script error: No such module "Sort".
1845 Lorenzino de' Medici Script error: No such module "Sort".
1846 Attila Script error: No such module "Sort".
1846 Estella di Murcia Script error: No such module "Sort".
1847 Griselda Script error: No such module "Sort".
1847 Macbeth (first version) Script error: No such module "Sort".
1847 Tutti amanti Script error: No such module "Sort".
1848 Allan Cameron Script error: No such module "Sort".
1848 Giovanna di Fiandra Script error: No such module "Sort".
1848 Il corsaro Script error: No such module "Sort".
1848 La Schiava Saracena Script error: No such module "Sort".
1850 Crispino e la comare Script error: No such module "Sort". and Federico Ricci
1850 Elisabetta di Valois Script error: No such module "Sort".
1850 Stiffelio Script error: No such module "Sort".
1851 La Sposa di Murçia Script error: No such module "Sort".
1851 Rigoletto Script error: No such module "Sort".
1853 Baschina Script error: No such module "Sort".
1853 La donna delle isole Script error: No such module "Sort".
1853 La prigioniera Script error: No such module "Sort".
1853 La traviata Script error: No such module "Sort".
1854 Margherita di Borgogna Script error: No such module "Sort".
1854 Pittore e Duca Script error: No such module "Sort".
1856 I Fidanzati Script error: No such module "Sort".
1857 Simon Boccanegra (first version) Script error: No such module "Sort".
1857 Aroldo (revision of Stiffelio) Script error: No such module "Sort".
1857 Vittore Pisani Script error: No such module "Sort".
1859 Margherita la mendicante Script error: No such module "Sort".
1860 La Biscaglina Script error: No such module "Sort".
1861 Guglielmo Shakspeare Script error: No such module "Sort".
1862 La forza del destino (first version) Script error: No such module "Sort".
1862 Mormile Script error: No such module "Sort".
1862 Rienzi Script error: No such module "Sort".
1865 La Duchessa di Guisa Script error: No such module "Sort".
1865 Macbeth (second version) Script error: No such module "Sort".
1865 Rebecca Script error: No such module "Sort".
1867 Berta di Varnol Script error: No such module "Sort".
1867 Don Diego de Mendoza Script error: No such module "Sort".
1868 La tombola Script error: No such module "Sort".
1872 Olema Script error: No such module "Sort".

Filmography

References

Notes

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  1. ↑ a b c d Baldini 1970, pp. 70 - 74
  2. ↑ 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
  3. ↑ Verdi to Piave, 6 May 1850, in Phillips-Matz 1993, p. 265
  4. ↑ Verdi to Piave, 29 November 1850, in Phillips-Matz 1993, p. 270
  5. ↑ Black 1998, p. 999
  6. ↑ Phiilips-Matz 1993, p. 644
  7. ↑ List of operas for which Piave wrote the libretto taken from opera.stanford.edu Retrieved 9 September 2013

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Sources

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External links

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