Rigoletto

The Austrian censors in Venice refused to allow a king to be shown as a libertine, and Verdi's opera after Hugo's Le roi s'amuse survived only by moving the action to Mantua and demoting the monarch to a duke; the working title, La maledizione, went too. Verdi refused to give the tenor La donna è mobile until the dress rehearsal, fearing the gondoliers would be singing it before the premiere. That premiere took place at La Fenice on 11 March 1851 and the tune was indeed all over Venice the next morning.