Piave set to work revising the libretto, eventually pulling from it another opera, Il Duca di Vendome, in which the sovereign was a duke and both the hunchback and the curse disappeared. La Fenice's poster for the world premiere of Rigoletto Despite their best efforts, including frantic correspondence with La Fenice, the Austrian censor De Gorzkowski emphatically denied consent to the production of "La Maledizione" (its working title) in a December 1850 letter, calling the opera "a repugnant immorality and obscene triviality." In August, Verdi and Piave retired to Busseto, Verdi's hometown, to prepare a defensive scheme as they continued work on the opera.
He was wrong, and rumours began to spread in early summer that the production would be forbidden. As Verdi wrote in a letter to Piave: "Use four legs, run through the town and find me an influential person who can obtain the permission for making Le Roi s'amuse." Guglielmo Brenna, secretary of La Fenice, promised the duo that they would not have problems with the censors. The play had been banned in France following its premiere nearly twenty years earlier (not to be staged again until 1882) now it was to come before the Austrian Board of Censors (as Austria at that time directly controlled much of Northern Italy.)įrom the beginning, both composer and librettist knew this step would not be easy.
Verdi later explained that "The subject is grand, immense, and there is a character that is one of the greatest creations that the theatre can boast of, in any country and in all history." However, Hugo's depiction of a venal, cynical, womanizing king ( Francis I of France) was considered unacceptably scandalous. That came in the form of Victor Hugo's controversial five-act play Le roi s'amuse ("The king amuses himself"). He initially asked Francesco Maria Piave (with whom he had already created Ernani, I due Foscari, Macbeth, Il corsaro and Stiffelio) to examine the play Kean by Alexandre Dumas, père, but soon came to believe that they needed to find a more energetic subject. He was prominent enough by this time to enjoy some freedom in choosing texts to set to music. La Fenice of Venice commissioned Verdi in 1850 to compose a new opera.
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