Un ballo in maschera in the context of Daniel Auber

Re Lear (Italian pronunciation: [ˌre lˈli(ːa)r]; King Lear) is an Italian operatic libretto in four acts written by Antonio Somma for the Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi. It was based on King Lear, "the Shakespeare play with which Verdi struggled for so many years, but without success".

The Re Lear project is widely considered illustrative of Verdi's complex and enduring fascination with Shakespeare. Verdi commissioned the libretto first from Salvadore Cammarano, who died in June 1852 before he could complete it. Then, three years later, while working with Antonio Somma on what was eventually to become Un ballo in maschera, he proposed that Somma read King Lear and he re-read the play himself, then sought Somma's reactions. Their extensive correspondence has been preserved; it thoroughly documents Verdi's oversight and detailed supervision, the result being two completed and still extant versions of the libretto prepared by Somma in 1853 and 1855.

Antonio Somma (28 August 1809, Udine – 8 August 1864, Venice) was an Italian playwright who is most well known for writing the libretto of an opera which ultimately became Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera in 1859. While a student, his tragedy, Parisina, gave him quite a success.

Initially, his contact with Verdi came about when the composer was seeking to continue work on his proposed Re Lear, an adaptation of the Shakespeare play, King Lear, for the opera stage which had begun under his long-time collaborator Salvadore Cammarano who had died. Under Verdi's supervision, Somma wrote the libretto for Re Lear, a project that Verdi never realised musically although extensive work was done and a full libretto completed to the point where Verdi was considering this to be the opera he wrote for Naples for the 1858 season.

Melodramma (plural: melodrammi) is a 17th-century Italian term for a text to be set as an opera, or the opera itself. In the 19th century, it was used in a much narrower sense by English writers to discuss developments in the early Italian libretto, e.g., Rigoletto and Un ballo in maschera. Characteristic are the influence of French bourgeois drama, female instead of male protagonists, and the practice of opening the action with a chorus.

It should not be confused with Melodrama (spelt with a single rather than a double m) in the sense either of Victorian stage melodrama (drama of exaggerated intensity) or of spoken declamation accompanied by background music (in Italian, melologo).