Libretto by Antonio Somma, after Eugene Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's Gustave III ou Le Bal Masque.
The text for Ballo has a complicated background. It is, in fact, a version by a less well known librettist, Antonio Somma, based on Eugene Scribe's text for Gustave III ou Le Bal Masque, a five-act opera by Daniel Auber, based on fact.
Somma's version transferred the action from the Swedish court of Gustav III to seventeenth century Boston. Verdi found this necessary because regicide was considered an unsuitable subject by the censor.
Scribe was a prolific librettist, employed by many composers because of his brilliant stagecraft. Verdi used him for Vepres Siciliennes ( Sicilian Vespers ) as well as for Ballo.
This using and re-using of extant stories and texts for operas is very common. The idea of librettist and composer working together to create from scratch is almost unheard of in the nineteenth century, and still not totally established as the norm in the twentieth.
