the detailed sketch was handed over to Verdi; it still survives. Working with Somma Following Cammarano's death, Antonio Somma, who was both a friend and a dramatist ("but also a neophyte in the libretto making trade") approached Verdi with ideas for a libretto. He was instrumental in anonymously writing the original libretto for Gustavo III, an opera which changed its name several times and which finally became Un ballo in maschera in 1859. However, in his letter to Somma of 22 April 1853, Verdi laid out some of his reasons for disliking the subjects which Somma had proposed, noting his reservations about repeating subject areas which he had already tackled and observing that "I prefer Shakespeare to all dramatists, not excepting the Greeks". Accordingly, he asked the librettist to take a look at Shakespeare's King Lear, seeking his ideas. In a further letter to Somma a month later (after he had re-read the play), Verdi detailed his concept of how the opera should be constructed. As documented in their extensive correspondence and with Verdi's overall detailed supervision, two completed and still extant versions of the libretto were prepared, the first in 1853 followed by the second in 1855. Only in 1996 did music historian Leo Karl Gerhartz come across a brief paper in the Carrara-Verdi archives at Sant' Agata, Verdi's home near Busseto, and it was through the later support from that family (as well as the American National Endowment for the Humanities) that much more material including Somma's manuscript libretto became available on microfilm. Many of the subsequent letters from the composer (those of 29 June, 30 August, and 9 September 1853 for example), in addition to others continuing into April 1856, constantly demonstrate Verdi's detailed oversight. Subsequent correspondence with Somma up to 1859 focuses primarily on the problems which Verdi was having with the censors on Un Ballo in Maschera. But the Re Lear project kept haunting Verdi to the end of his life. In 1896, he offered his Lear material to Pietro Mascagni who asked "Maestro, why didn't you put it into music?". According to Mascagni, "softly and slowly he replied 'the scene in which King Lear finds himself on the heath scared me'". References Notes Sources Carrara Verdi, G. (Ed.) (2002), Giuseppe Verdi – Antonio Somma, Per il 'Re Lear' , Parma, Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani. Chusid, Martin (1997), Verdi's Middle Period 1849-1859: Source Studies,