Francesco Maria Piave was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 librettist

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 who was born in Murano

Murano

Murano is a series of islands linked by bridges in the Venetian Lagoon, northern Italy. It lies about 1.5 km north of Venice and measures about across with a population of just over 5,000 . It is famous for its glass making, particularly lampworking...

 in the lagoon of Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, during the brief Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy

Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic)

The Kingdom of Italy was a state founded in Northern Italy by Napoleon, fully influenced by revolutionary France, that ended with his defeat and fall.-Constitutional statutes:...

. His career spanned over twenty years working with many of the significant composers of his day. In addition to Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

, for whom he was to write 10 librettos, other composers include Giovanni Pacini

Giovanni Pacini

Giovanni Pacini was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. Pacini was born in Catania, Sicily, the son of the buffo Luigi Pacini, who was to appear in the premieres of many of Giovanni's operas...

 (four librettos), Saverio Mercadante

Saverio Mercadante

Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as impressive a number of works as either; and his development of...

 (at least one), Federico Ricci

Federico Ricci

Federico Ricci , was an Italian composer, particularly of operas.Born in Naples, he was the younger brother of Luigi Ricci, with whom he collaborated on several works....

, 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 tact as a negotiator served Verdi well over the years, although Verdi bullied him mercilessly. For example, during the efforts to have Rigoletto approved by the censors, Verdi goaded Piave to make every effort to get the subject approved: "Turn Venice upside down to make the censors permit this subject"

Later, Verdi wrote to him not to allow matters to drag on:

If I were the poet, I would be very, very concerned, all the more because you would have a great deal of responsibility if by chance (may the Devil not make it happen) they should not allow this drama [to be given]"

But the librettist became Verdi's life-long friend and collaborator - "someone Verdi loved", following Salvadore Cammarano as Verdi's main mid-career librettist and writing the libretti for Verdi's operas Ernani

Ernani

Ernani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Hernani by Victor Hugo. The first production took place at La Fenice Theatre, Venice on 9 March 1844...

(1844), I due Foscari

I due Foscari

I due Foscari is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on a historical play, The Two Foscari by Lord Byron....

(1844), Attila

Attila (opera)

Attila is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the play Attila, König der Hunnen by Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner. Initially, Verdi had enlisted Francesco Maria Piave to prepare the libretto, after Verdi's own scenario...

(1846), Macbeth

Macbeth (opera)

Macbeth is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name...

(1847), Il Corsaro

Il corsaro

Il corsaro is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, from a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on Lord Byron's poem The Corsair...

(1848), Stiffelio

Stiffelio

Stiffelio is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, from an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Le pasteur, ou L'évangile et le foyer by Émile Souvestre and Eugène Bourgeois...

(1850), Rigoletto (1851), La traviata

La traviata

La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...

(1853) Simon Boccanegra

Simon Boccanegra

Simon Boccanegra is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Simón Bocanegra by Antonio García Gutiérrez....

(1857), and La forza del destino

La forza del destino

La forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...

(1862). Like Verdi, Piave was an ardent Italian patriot, and in 1848, during Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

's "Cinque Giornate," when Radetsky's

Joseph Radetzky von Radetz

Johann Josef Wenzel Graf Radetzky von Radetz was a Czech nobleman and Austrian general, immortalised by Johann Strauss I's Radetzky March...

 Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n troops retreated from the city, Verdi's letter to Piave in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 was addressed to "Citizen Piave."

Piave would have also prepared the libretto for Aida

Aida

Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...

, the commission for which Verdi accepted in 1870, had he not suffered a stroke

Stroke

A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...

, which left him paralyzed and unable to speak. Verdi helped to support his wife and daughter - by proposing that "an album of pieces by famous composers be compiled and sold for Piave's benefit" - and paid for his funeral when he died nine years later in Milan at age 65. Piave was interred there in the Cimitero Monumentale.

1847

• Tutti amanti (Felice Romani
  Felice Romani
  Felice Romani was an Italian poet and scholar of literature and mythology who wrote many librettos for the opera composers Donizetti and Bellini. Romani was considered the finest Italian librettist between Metastasio and Boito.-Biography:Born Giuseppe Felice Romani to a bourgeois family in Genoa,...
  
  )
• Griselda (Federico Ricci)
• Macbeth (Verdi)

1848

• Allan Cameron (Pacini)
• Il Corsaro (Verdi)
• Giovanna di Fiandre (Carlo Boniforti)
• La Schiava Saracena (Saverio Mercadante)

1850

• Stiffelio (Verdi)
• Crispino e la comare (Luigi Ricci
  Luigi Ricci
  Luigi Ricci , was an Italian composer, particularly of operas.He was the elder brother of Federico Ricci, with whom he collaborated on several works.- Life :...
  
   and Federico Ricci)
• Elisabetta di Valois (Antonio Buzzolla
  Antonio Buzzolla
  Antonio Buzzolla was an Italian composer and conductor. A native of Adria, he studied in Venice, and later worked with Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. He composed five operas, but was better known in his lifetime for ariettas and canzonettas in the Venetian dialect...
  
  )

1853

• La Baschina (F. De Liguoro)
• La Traviata (Verdi)
• La Prigioniera (C. Bonsoni)