Verdi, Giuseppe

urging the poet to provide him with a libretto (preferably Re Lear), for the opera they are committed to stage at the Teatro San Carlo Naples that autumn, warning him that he is becoming desperate to receive a completed libretto ("...ma quello che abbisogna a me si è un libretto...Un libretto! capite?. e subito!..."), discussing the possibility of an opera about Don Carlos, which attracts him because of the character of Posa and the scene between the Grand Inquisitor and King Philip, but conceding that it would be banned by the censor; Verdi also considers setting various plays by Dumas père, including [Le Comte] Herman, Vanina [ie the crime story Vaninka], Kean and Richard Darlington, but concludes that by far the best solution would be for Cammarano to put his heart and soul into work on Re Lear as soon as possible and to send him a rough sketch and also some verses for the 'Introduction'

 ...Il Don Carlos mi piacerebbe lasciando in tut[t]a la sua integrità e sublimità il carattere del Posa, e la scena dell' Inquisitore con Filippo.  Tutto ciò è impossibile per la censura, poi è sogetto troppo vecchio...Il meglio che avvi a fare vi è di mettersi corpo ed anima al Re Lear...



 2 pages, 8vo (20.8 x 13.9cm), integral autograph address panel (annotated by another hand), remains of seal, typed transcription, Busseto, 6 May 1850, browning to address-leaf

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Apparently unpublished:  not in C.M. Mossa, Carteggio Verdi-Cammarano (2001). This letter is fascinating for Verdi's early discussion of Don Carlos, an opera he was only to compose for Paris in 1867.  The letter also shows how determined Verdi was to persuade Cammarano (whom he addresses as "esimio poeta al Teatro S. Carlo") to write a scenario based on Shakespeare's King Lear.  The librettist died in 1852, before even completing Il trovatore, and in 1853, Verdi asked Antonio Somma to write a libretto, but in the end he never set it, intimidated (so he later told Mascagni) by the idea of setting the scene on the blasted heath.