The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, was born in Jérémie, Saint-Domingue (Haiti) in 1762, the son of the Marquis and Marie-Cessette Dumas, his Haitian slave. In addition to being the father of French novelist Alexandre Dumas, he was the grandfather of playwright Alexandre Dumas, known for "La Dame aux Camélias", the source for Giuseppe Verdi's "La traviata". Dumas was born the son of a renegade French nobleman and his black slave in 1762 in the French sugar colony of Saint Domingue (the future Haiti); at the time of his birth, his father was living on the run from the royal authorities
Giuseppe Verdi and Strepponi left Paris in July 1849, the immediate cause being an outbreak of cholera, and Verdi went directly to Busseto to continue work on completing his latest opera, "Luisa Miller", for a production in Naples later in the year. Verdi was committed to the publisher Giovanni Ricordi for an opera—which became "Stiffelio"—for Trieste in the Spring of 1850; and, subsequently, following negotiations with La Fenice, developed a libretto with Piave and wrote the music for "Rigoletto" (based on Victor Hugo's "Le roi s'amuse") for Venice in March 1851. This was the first of a sequence of three operas (followed