Francesco Maria Piave

Francesco Maria Piave was born on 18 May 1810 in Murano, in the lagoon of Venice, during the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. An Italian opera librettist, he worked across a career spanning more than two decades and contributed texts to composers including Giovanni Pacini, for whom he wrote four librettos, Saverio Mercadante, Federico Ricci, and Michael Balfe. His Broadway credits include La Traviata, Rigoletto, and La Forza del Destino.

Piave's professional life extended beyond libretto writing. He worked as a journalist and translator and held the position of resident poet and stage manager at La Fenice in Venice, where he first met Giuseppe Verdi. Verdi later helped him obtain the equivalent position at La Scala in Milan. His skills as a stage manager and negotiator proved useful to Verdi throughout their association, though Verdi subjected him to persistent and often harsh criticism over many years.

The collaboration between Piave and Verdi began in 1844 and continued through 1862, producing ten operas in total. Piave's librettos for Verdi include Ernani (1844), I due Foscari (1844), Attila (1846), the first version of Macbeth (1847), Il Corsaro (1848), Stiffelio (1850), Rigoletto (1851), La traviata (1853), the first version of Simon Boccanegra (1857), Aroldo (1857), the first version of La forza del destino (1862), and the revised Macbeth (1865). Rigoletto and La traviata are regarded as the best known among these works.

Scholar Gabriele Baldini observed that working with Piave represented Verdi's first sustained opportunity to exert full control over a collaborator, with the composer effectively shaping the librettos in both their overall structure and specific details. Verdi's pressure on Piave was at times direct and forceful, as illustrated by his demands during the effort to secure approval from Venetian censors for Rigoletto. Another scholar noted that despite Verdi's relentless criticism and his practice of having Piave's work revised by others, Piave remained devoted to the composer, and the two maintained a genuine friendship throughout their lives.

Both men shared strong Italian patriotic convictions. During Milan's Cinque Giornate of 1848, when Austrian troops under Radetzky withdrew from the city, Verdi addressed a letter to Piave in Venice using the salutation "Citizen Piave."

In 1870, when Verdi accepted the commission for Aida, Piave would have been the librettist for that work as well, but a stroke left him paralyzed and unable to speak before he could undertake it. Verdi responded by proposing that an album of pieces by prominent composers be compiled and sold for Piave's financial benefit, and he also provided support for Piave's wife and daughter. When Piave died on 5 March 1876 in Milan at the age of 65, Verdi paid for his funeral and arranged for his burial at the Monumental Cemetery.