The Picture of Dorian Gray biography, "Oscar Wilde" (1989), the literary critic Richard Ellmann said that: Wilde does not name the book, but at his trial he conceded that it was, or almost [was], Huysmans's "À rebours" ... to a correspondent, he wrote that he had played a 'fantastic variation' upon "À rebours", and someday must write it down. The references in "Dorian Gray" to specific chapters are deliberately inaccurate. Some commentators have suggested that "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was influenced by the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's (anonymously published) first novel "Vivian Grey" (1826) as, "a kind of homage from one outsider to
The Picture of Dorian Gray (opera) its first performance on June 6, 2007 at the Perelman Theater in the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a production by Leland Kimball, conducted by Andrew M. Kurtz. Aspen Opera Center staged the work in July 2014. "Scene 1" In the studio of Basil Hallward, Basil and his old university friend Lord Henry Wotton converse as Basil completes his new portrait of Dorian Gray, a handsome young aristocrat who has become Basil's muse. Lord Henry wishes to meet Dorian, but Basil says he would be a bad influence on Dorian. After Dorian arrives to pose for