THEmetatheatrical notion of an opera-loving king assassinated in the opera house he built was irresistible to 19th-century composers, spawning at least three operas about Gustav’s demise.

The first, Gustave III, or The Masked Ball, by French composer Daniel Auber was quite successful, notching almost 200 performances after its premiere in 1833. Auber is little known today, but he helped establish the French grand opera genre with The Mute Girl of Portici, written in 1828.

Saverio Mercadante used an Italian version of the text from Auber’s opera in his Il Reggente (The Regent), which premiered in 1843. It was less successful than its French predecessor and eventually vanished from sight, eclipsed by Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball).

Its creation was not without plenty of drama. Verdi and his librettist, Antonio Somma, went through two years of contortions and multiple iterations of the story, title, and characters before it could be performed. Their opera began life as Gustavo III but the censors in Naples objected to the onstage presence of a monarch, much less the portrayal of his assassination. The king became a count, and the setting was moved from Stockholm to the Polish city of Stettin; the opera’s title became Vengeance in Domino. (A domino was a hooded cloak worn at masquerades.)

Just as rehearsals were about to begin in January 1858, three Italians tried to assassinate Emperor Napoleon III in Paris, prompting the censors to demand more changes. Verdi refused, and he and the San Carlo Opera sued each other, eventually reaching a settlement that allowed the composer to offer it to the Rome Opera, back under its original title of Gustavo III.

However, the censors in Rome insisted on still more changes — more radical ones at that. Instead of the sophisticated Swedish capital or even Poland, the venue was colonial Boston in the early 1700s, the royal court became the Puritan denizens of the city (although they were still enmeshed in an adulterous plot), and the king became the city’s governor. It was finally premiered in 1859 as Un Ballo in Maschera, without causing any regicides. Today more and more productions revert to the original Swedish setting and characters, if not the title. — M.T.