Un ballo in maschera

Verdi turned to a true story of a political assassination—with a love triangle and a fortune teller’s prophecy added for good measure—as the basis for Un ballo in maschera (“A Masked Ball”). The composer had agreed to write an opera for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples to run during carnival season. He settled on the true story of Sweden’s King Gustav III, who was shot during a masked ball in 1792. But the Neapolitan censors objected to several elements, notably the climatic scene in which the king is assassinated onstage. Verdi and librettist Antonio Somma agreed to numerous changes, including moving the murder offstage and changing the murder weapon to a knife. The censors were still not satisfied, however, so an exasperated Verdi took the opera to Rome’s Teatro Apollo. The Vatican censors demanded more changes, so the composer demoted the king to a lesser noble and moved the action from Sweden to colonial Boston. The 1859 premiere was an immediate success. In the end, Verdi created a vivid and skilfully paced opera of contested loyalties that builds to a thrilling conclusion.