Francesco Maria Piave
Francesco Maria Piave (born May 18, 1810 in Murano (now Venice ), † March 5, 1876 in Milan ) was an Italian librettist and director .
Life
From 1844 to 1860 Piave was a director (and thus also a librettist) at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and in 1861, on the recommendation of Giuseppe Verdi, moved to the Teatro alla Scala in Milan . In 1867 he suffered a stroke and remained paralyzed for the rest of his life. To support him and his wife, Verdi planned in 1869 to publish an album of 6 romances with compositions by Daniel François Esprit Auber , Ambroise Thomas , Luigi Ricci , Saverio Mercadante and himself; it probably didn't come to that.
Verdi valued Piave, who provided him with no less than 9 (with Aroldo 10) librettos, mainly because he was a faithful servant of his master. What Verdi asked of him, he immediately put into practice, but did not have the intellectual independence and the self-confidence to create really innovative text templates that free themselves from literary and music-dramatic conventions. Nevertheless, he made it possible for Verdi, who witnessed the revolution of 1848 in Paris and who had made its ideals and objectives his own, to set socially critical material such as Rigoletto and La traviata to music (not least because the censorship in Venice was comparatively liberal). Incidentally, La Traviata is the only opera by Verdi (and Piaves?) That was set in the present, otherwise Piave liked to pick up on the romantic subjects of Lord Byron , Victor Hugo , Antonio García Gutiérrez , etc., which were then in fashion , mostly by hers mutual friend Andrea Maffei had been translated into Italian for the first time.
Piave was always treated somewhat condescendingly by Verdi in his letters, and not infrequently - because of his sluggishness and obesity - almost mocked him.
Works (selection)
(named are the place and year of the premiere)
- Ernani for Giuseppe Verdi after Hernani by Victor Hugo (Venice 1844)
- I due Foscari for Giuseppe Verdi after The Two Foscari by Lord Byron (Venice 1844)
- Macbeth for Giuseppe Verdi after Macbeth by William Shakespeare (Florence 1847),revisedwith the collaboration of Andrea Maffei von Verdi (Paris 1865)
- Il corsaro for Giuseppe Verdi after The Corsair by Lord Byron (Trieste 1848)
- Stiffelio for Giuseppe Verdi after Le pasteur, ou L'évangile et le foyer by Émile Souvestre and Eugène Bourgeois (Trieste 1850)
- Crispino e la comare for Luigi Ricci and Federico Ricci (the (only?) Opera buffa , Venice 1850)
- Rigoletto for Giuseppe Verdi after Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo (Venice 1851)
- La traviata for Giuseppe Verdi after La dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas the Elder. J. (Venice 1853)
- Simon Boccanegra for Giuseppe Verdi after Simón Bocanegra by Antonio García Gutiérrez (Venice 1857), revised by Arrigo Boito and Verdi (Milan 1881)
- Aroldo for Giuseppe Verdi after The Betrothed by Walter Scott and Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (revision of the Stiffelio , see above , Rimini 1857)
- La forza del destino for Giuseppe Verdi after Ángel de Saavedras Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino and a scene from Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein's camp (St. Petersburg 1862), revised by Antonio Ghislanzoni and Verdi (Milan 1869)
literature
- Carl Dahlhaus et al. (Ed.): Piper's Encyclopedia of Music Theater. Volume 7 (edited by U. Steffen). Piper, Munich 1997.
Web links
- Works by and about Francesco Maria Piave in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Francesco Maria Piave in the German Digital Library
- Vita
- List of libretti
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Piave, Francesco Maria |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian librettist and director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 18, 1810 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Murano (now part of Venice ) |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 5, 1876 |
| Place of death | Milan |