Editing Un ballo in maschera (section)

===1858: The censor blocks ''Una vendetta''===
The imposition of still further, more stringent requirements by the censor<ref>Verdi to Somma, 7 February 1858 {{harvnb|Werfel|Stefan|1973|p=207}}: "I'm drowning in a sea of troubles. It's almost certain that the censors will forbid our libretto."</ref> incurred Verdi's wrath.  He broke his contract, returned to Sant'Agata in April, and was sued by the management of the San Carlo house.  This provoked him to lodge a counter-claim against the theatre for damages and, eventually, the legal fight ended.

It was during this period of turmoil that Verdi was to describe the previous sixteen years of his composing life: in a letter to Countess Clara Maffei, he states: "From ''[[Nabucco]]'', you may say, I have never had one hour of peace. Sixteen years in the galleys!"<ref name="VtoM">Verdi to Clara Maffei, 12 May 1858, in {{harvnb|Phillips-Matz|1993|p=379}}</ref><ref>[[Philip Gossett]], "Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento", ''[[Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society]]'', vol. 156, no. 3, September 2012: Gossett notes: "Yet Verdi's only use of the expression is in a letter of 1858 to his Milanese friend Clarina Maffei, where it refers to all his operas through ''Un ballo in maschera'': it laments the social circumstances in which Italian composers worked in the mid-nineteenth century, rather than judging aesthetic value."</ref>