Editing Don Carlos (section)

====1882/83 and 1886 revisions: "Milan version" and "Modena version"====
The idea of reducing the scope and scale of ''Don Carlos'' had originally come to Verdi in 1875, partly as a result of his having heard reports of productions, such as Costa's, which had removed Act 1 and the ballet and introduced cuts to other parts of the opera. By April 1882, he was in Paris where he was ready to make changes. He was already familiar with the work of [[Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter]], who had worked on French translations of ''[[Macbeth (Verdi)|Macbeth]]'', ''[[La forza del destino]]'' and ''[[Aida]]'' with du Locle, and the three proceeded to spend nine months on major revisions of the French text and the music to create a four-act version. This omitted Act 1 and the ballet, and was completed by March 1883.<ref>Budden 1981, pp. 31–38.</ref> An Italian translation of this revised French text, re-using much of the original 1866 translation by de Lauzières, was made by {{Interlanguage link|Angelo Zanardini|it}}. The La Scala première of the 1883 revised version took place on 10 January 1884 in Italian.<ref>1884 Milan version: [http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb41450457d/PUBLIC Notice de spectacle] at [[BnF]].</ref>

Although Verdi had accepted the need to remove the first act, it seems that he changed his mind and allowed a performance which presented the "Fontainebleau" first act along with the revised four-act version. It was given on 29 December 1886 in Modena, and has become known as the "Modena version", which was published by [[Giulio Ricordi|Ricordi]] as "a new edition in five acts without ballet".<ref>Budden 1981, p. 39.</ref>