Page "Rigoletto" Paragraph 3

From the beginning, Verdi was aware of the risks, as was Piave.

In a letter which Verdi wrote to Piave: " Use four legs, run through the town and find me an influential person who can obtain the permission for making Le Roi s ' amuse.

" Correspondence between a prudent Piave and an already committed Verdi followed, and the two remained at risk and underestimated the power and the intentions of Austrians.

Even the friendly Guglielmo Brenna, secretary of La Fenice, who had promised them that they would not have problems with the censors, was wrong.

At the beginning of the summer of 1850, rumours started to spread that Austrian censorship was going to forbid the production.

They considered the Hugo work to verge on lèse majesté, and would never permit such a scandalous work to be performed in Venice.

In August, Verdi and Piave prudently retired to Busseto, Verdi's hometown, to continue the composition and prepare a defensive scheme.

They wrote to the theatre, assuring them that the censor's doubts about the morality of the work were not justified but since very little time was left, very little could be done.

At the time, Piave and Verdi had titled opera La maledizione ( The Curse ), and this unofficial title was used by Austrian censor De Gorzkowski in an emphatic letter written in December 1850 in which he definitively denied consent to its production calling it " a repugnant of immorality and obscene triviality.