Who is the coward character who plays appears in one of Shakespeare's lesser-regarded works that has been adapted for the opera on several occasions?
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Ancient Pistol Ancient Pistol is a swaggering soldier who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. Though full of grandiose boasts about his prowess, he is essentially a coward. The character is introduced in "Henry IV, Part 2" and reappears in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Henry V".
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The Merry Wives of Windsor The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare first published in 1602, though believed to have been written in or before 1597. The Windsor of the play's title is a reference to the town of Windsor, also the location of Windsor Castle, in Berkshire, England, and though nominally set in the reign of Henry IV, the play makes no pretence to exist outside contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life. It features the character Sir John Falstaff, the fat knight who had previously been featured in "Henry IV, Part 1" and "Part 2". It has been adapted for the opera on several occasions. The play is one of Shakespeare's lesser-regarded works among literary critics.
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Der Sturm (opera) Der Sturm (The tempest) is a German-language opera in three acts by the Swiss composer Frank Martin to a libretto based on the Schlegel/Tieck German translation of Shakespeare's play "The Tempest". It was premiered at the Vienna State Opera in 1955. The role of Prospero was originally conceived for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but illness prevented him participating.
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The Emerald Isle The Emerald Isle; "or, The Caves of Carrig-Cleena", is a two-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and Edward German, and a libretto by Basil Hood. The plot concerns the efforts of an Irish patriot to resist the oppressive "re-education" programme of the English, which has robbed the Irish of their cultural heritage. A quirky "Professor of Elocution" who is hired by the English to continue this "re-education" of the Irish switches sides to help the Irish. Romantic complications cause a confrontation between the Irish patriots and the superstitious English at the supposedly haunted caves of Carric-Cleena, and disguises are employed to hold the English off; but the professor ultimately comes up with a solution that works out happily for all.
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Poro (opera) Poro, re dell'Indie ("Porus, King of the Pakistani region", HWV 28) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from "Alessandro nell'Indie" by Metastasio, and based on Alexander the Great's encounter with King Porus in 326 BC. The libretto had already been set to music by Leonardo Vinci in 1729 and by Antonio Vivaldi among others and was used as the text for more than sixty operas throughout the 18th century.
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Un re in ascolto Un re in ascolto ("A King Listens") is an opera by Luciano Berio, who also wrote the Italian libretto. It is based on a short story, Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino, but incorporates excerpts from Friedrich Einsiedel's 1778 libretto (as reworked by Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter between 1790 and 1791) for an opera based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest". This became "Die Geisterinsel" in 1798, set to music written by Friedrich Fleischmann. In addition, W. H. Auden's "The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest" was a source.
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Artaserse (Hasse) Artaserse is an opera ("dramma per musica") in three acts composed by Johann Adolph Hasse to an Italian libretto adapted from that by Metastasio by Giovanni Boldini. It premiered at the Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice on 11 February 1730, shortly after the libretto's first setting by Leonardo Vinci premiered in Rome 6 days earlier. Metastasio's libretto, "Artaserse", has been used in more than 90 works. Hasse himself would later re-work the score for performances at the Opernhaus am Zwinger in Dresden (1740) and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (1760).
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The Merchant of Venice (opera) The Merchant of Venice is an opera by André Tchaikowsky (1935–1982) to a libretto, based on the Shakespeare play, by John O'Brien. Written between 1968 and 1982, it was first performed in 2013 at the Bregenz Festival. The British premiere will be presented by the Welsh National Opera in September 2016.
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Nabucco Nabucco (] ; short for Nabucodonosor ] ~] , English Nebuchadnezzar) is an Italian-language opera in four acts composed in 1841 by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera. The libretto is based on biblical books of Jeremiah and Daniel and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue, although Antonio Cortese's ballet adaptation of the play (with its necessary simplifications), given at La Scala in 1836, was a more important source for Solera than the play itself. Under its original name of "Nabucodonosor", the opera was first performed at La Scala in Milan on 9 March 1842.
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Shakespeare in Love (play) Shakespeare in Love is a play produced by Disney Theatrical Productions and Sonia Friedman Productions and adapted by Lee Hall from the film of the same title. It opened at the Noel Coward Theatre in London in July 2014 with running time of 2 hours and 40 minutes.
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The Idiot (opera) The Idiot (Op.144, 1985), is a Russian-language opera by Mieczyslaw Weinberg after Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name. The piece was given its world premiere at the National Theatre Mannheim, on 9 May 2013, conducted by Thomas Sanderling, followed by a recording on Pan Classics.
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Les brigands Les brigands ("The Bandits") is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, by Jacques Offenbach to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Meilhac and Halévy's libretto lampoons both serious (Schiller's play set to music by Verdi) and light theatre ("Fra Diavolo" and "Les diamants de la couronne" by Auber). The plot is cheerfully amoral in its presentation of theft as a basic principle of society rather than as an aberration. As Falsacappa, the brigand chieftain, notes: "Everybody steals according to their position in society". The piece premiered in Paris in 1869 and has received periodic revivals in France and elsewhere, both in French and in translation.
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Wuthering Heights (1951 opera) Wuthering Heights is the sole opera written by Bernard Herrmann. He worked on it from 1943 to 1951. It is cast in a prologue, 4 acts, and an epilogue that repeats the music of the prologue. The opera was recorded in full by the composer in 1966, but it had to wait until April 2011, the centenary of the composer's birth, for a complete theatrical performance (there was an abridged stage production in 1982 and a concert version in 2010).
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Graham Payn Graham Payn (25 April 1918 – 4 November 2005) was a South African-born English actor and singer, also known for being the life partner of the playwright Noël Coward. Beginning as a boy soprano, Payn later made a career as a singer and actor in the works of Coward and others. After Coward's death, Payn ran the Coward estate for 22 years.
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Fantasio (Smyth) Fantasio is an opera in two acts composed by Ethel Smyth. The German-language libretto was written by Smyth and Henry Bennet Brewster. Described in the libretto as a "phantastische Comödie" (fantastic comedy), it was based on Alfred de Musset's 1834 play of the same name. The opera premiered at the Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar on 24 May 1898.
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Gloria (opera) Gloria is a tragic opera in three acts by Francesco Cilea with an Italian libretto by Arturo Colautti. A variation on the Romeo and Juliet story and set in 14th century Siena, the libretto is based on Victorien Sardou's 1874 play "La Haine" ("Hatred"). The opera premiered on 15 April 1907 at La Scala conducted by Arturo Toscanini with Salomea Krusceniski in the title role. "Gloria" was a failure at its premiere when it was withdrawn after two performances and fared little better in the 1932 revised version, although there have been two late 20th century revivals. It proved to be Cilea's last staged opera. In the 43 years following the premiere of "Gloria" he worked on two or three further operas which were never performed and continued to compose chamber and orchestral music.
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Eva (Foerster opera) Eva is a Czech-language opera by Josef Bohuslav Foerster first performed in Prague in 1899. It is one of the "new realism" operas of the turn of the century with strong Moravian Slovak elements.
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Ivanhoe (opera) Ivanhoe is a romantic opera in three acts based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott, with music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Julian Sturgis. It premiered at the Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891 for a consecutive run of 155 performances, unheard of for a grand opera. Later that year it was performed six more times, making a total of 161 performances.
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William Tell (opera) Guillaume Tell (English: William Tell , Italian: Guglielmo Tell ) is a French opera in four acts by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Étienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis. Based on Friedrich Schiller's play "William Tell," which drew on the William Tell legend, the opera was Rossini's last, although he lived for nearly forty more years. Fabio Luisi said that Rossini planned for "William Tell" to be his last opera even as he composed it. The overture, in four sections and featuring a depiction of a storm as well as a vivacious finale, the "March of the Swiss Soldiers," is often played.
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Peter Grimes Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from the narrative poem, "Peter Grimes," in George Crabbe's book "The Borough". The "borough" of the opera is a fictional village which shares some similarities with Crabbe's, and later Britten's, own home of Aldeburgh, a town on England's east coast.
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Romeo und Julie Romeo und Julie is a singspiel in three acts by composer Georg Benda. The opera has a German libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter that is based upon Christian Felix Weiße's translation of William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet".
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Muzio Scevola Muzio Scevola ("Mucius Scaevola", HWV 13) is an opera seria in three acts about Gaius Mucius Scaevola. The Italian-language libretto was by Paolo Antonio Rolli, adapted from a text by Silvio Stampiglia. The music for the first act was composed by Filippo Amadei (family name sometimes given as Mattei), the second act by Giovanni Bononcini, and the third by George Frideric Handel. Collaborations of groups of composers were common in the 18th century, though this is the only one done in London. Bononcini had written the music for two earlier treatments of this story on his own, works dating from 1695 and 1710.