Gustavo III (Verdi)

Gustavo III is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi to a libretto begun in early 1857 by the Italian playwright Antonio Somma. Never performed as written, the libretto was later revised (or proposed to be revised) several times under two additional names - Una vendetta in dominò and Adelia degli Adimari - during which the setting was changed to vastly different locations. Eventually, it was agreed that it could be called Un ballo in maschera, the one by which it is known today, but Verdi was forced to accept that the location of the story would have to be Colonial Boston. This setting became the "standard" one until the mid-20th Century. Most productions today locate the action in Sweden.

However, a "hypothetical reconstruction" of Gustavo III under its original name was performed by the Gothenburg Opera in Sweden during the 2002/03 season.

In early 1856 Vincenzo Torelli, secretary to the Teatro San Carlo's management approached Verdi with a contract offer, the proposed opera being Re Lear, an opera based on Shakespeare's King Lear. It was known to be a subject dear to the composer, but this libretto, for which Somma and Verdi had worked for some time, raised concerns for Verdi, not the least of which was finding a suitable cast in Naples, given the practice of a company engaging a group of singers for an entire season and giving them the major roles to sing in all productions, thus forcing a composer to take into account their strengths and weaknesses in the roles he was creating.

Even though it proved to be impracticable to continue with Re Lear, Verdi signed a contract in February 1857 for performances during the 1857/58 carnival season, but, as the year progressed and with time running out, he had misgivings and failed to meet commitments regarding Lear. Finally, in a letter which he wrote to Torelli in September 1857, Verdi confessed that he had "looked through an infinite number of plays.....but not one of them will do for me..." but he then described an existing libretto which interested him, one which was written by the French playwright and librettist Eugene Scribe for Daniel Auber's very successful 1833 opera, Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué:

...
Wikipedia