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Plays adapted into operas

  • MacbethMacbeth is the shortest tragedy William Shakespeare wrote, more than a thousand lines shorter than Othello and King Lear.
  • HamletHamlet is the longest play William Shakespeare ever wrote, and it might require more than four hours to stage. A typical Elizabethan play needed two to three…
  • The TempestThe Tempest opens with a ship shattering apart in a storm, sailors screaming, and a king convinced he is about to drown.
  • Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet begins with a curse. Before a single scene has played out, a Chorus steps forward to tell the audience that two young lovers are already…
  • The Winter's TaleThe play The Winter's Tale draws its main plot from Robert Greene's pastoral romance Pandosto, published in 1588. Shakespeare made uncharacteristically…
  • Richard III (play)Richard III opens with a man addressing you directly, telling you exactly who he is and what he plans to do. "I am determined to prove a villain," says the…
  • The Importance of Being EarnestThe Importance of Being Earnest had its first performance on the 14th of February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, a night that Allan Aynesworth…
  • OthelloOthello, written by William Shakespeare around 1603, opens with a secret. A Moorish general and a senator's daughter have eloped in the night, and before…
  • The Merchant of VeniceThe Merchant of Venice, a play by William Shakespeare, hinges on a single clause in a loan agreement: if the borrower defaults, the lender may cut exactly…
  • Goethe's FaustGoethe's Faust opens in Heaven, with the Devil making a bet with God. Satan wagers he can lead one righteous soul astray. God accepts.
  • Caligula (play)Albert Camus began writing Caligula in 1938, though the first surviving manuscript bears the date 1939. The work emerged during a period of intense personal…
  • King LearKing Lear asks a question that has unsettled audiences for four centuries: what happens when a man with absolute power demands to be loved?
  • A Midsummer Night's DreamA Midsummer Night's Dream opens in Athens, four days before a wedding, with a father dragging his daughter before a duke and invoking a law that would see…
  • Oedipus RexOedipus Rex opens with a city dying. Thebes is consumed by plague, and its king stands before his people vowing to hunt down the murderer responsible.
  • The BacchaeThe Bacchae ends with a mother cradling what she believes is the head of a mountain lion, only to realize it belongs to her own son.
  • No ExitThe Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Paris hosted the first performance of No Exit in May 1944. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote this play to explore how human…