Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

La Forza del Destino

Francesco Maria Piave

Like the team of Lerner and Loewe and Rodgers and Hammerstein, the team of Piave and Verdi supplied the world with masterful lyric creations. Piave was born in Murano, Italy on 18 May, 1810 and seemed destined for a life of letters and philosophy; indeed, he even attended seminary in the hopes of becoming a priest, but wound up, due to financial difficulties, being a newspaper proofreader! Fortunately, due to contacts he had at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, he met the similarly impecunious Verdi, with whom he forged a lifetime friendship and collaboration. After discussing several historical projects based on the lives of Oliver Cromwell and Allan Cameron they turned to adapting Victor Hugo's play HERNANI. Their version, Italianized to Ernani (1844) was an immediate hit and led to other collaborations: I Due Foscari (1844), Macbeth (1847), Il Corsaro (1848), Stiffelio (1850), Rigoletto (1851), La Traviata (1853), Simon Boccanegra (1857), Aroldo (1857), and La Forza del Destino ((1862). When one looks at these operas and the novels or plays from which the majority came it is obvious that Piave's great talent was in adaptation, rather than seminal and original creation. Nevertheless it was a tremendous talent that he had: to transcend, subjugate, refine, cut, lengthen, and to be adaptive to the sometimes intransigent Verdi's demands. This served occasionally to strain their relationship, but the somewhat sycophantic Piave always acceded to Verdi's requirements.

As Verdi's talent developed and progressed he became aware that Piave's style was somewhat passé. He twice had to call on another librettist for help: Andrei Maffei for Macbeth, and Antonio Ghislanzoni (later helpful to him in Aїda) to help him in the revision La Forza del Destino, when a crippling and debilitating illness forced Piave to bow out of the enterprise. He died in the Italian capital of Milano on March 5, 1876.

Ever the word-smith, once he was strolling and saw a woman who had scorned him. As she passed, he loudly sang the words he had written for the Duke in Rigoletto:

"La donna é mobile (Woman is fickle)
Qual piuma al vento (As a feather in the wind)"


Obviously she had some literary talent as well for she equally as loudly replied:

"É Piave é un asino (And Piave is an ass)
Che val' per cento (Who is worth nothing)."

Obviously not a happy collaboration like the one he enjoyed with Verdi!

James Harp

Box Office Gift Shop Home