The Winter's Tale (opera) The Winter's Tale (opera) The Winter's Tale is an opera in three acts by Ryan Wigglesworth. The libretto is by the composer, based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare. The opera, in a production directed by Rory Kinnear, and conducted by the composer, was premiered at the English National Opera on 27 February 2017. The opera follows the main story of the play, reduced to three acts, and dropping the character Autolycus, and some other well-known features of the play such as Antigonus's stage direction "Exit, pursued by a bear". Act I is set in Sicily.
Play Without a Title the English-language translator of the play, argues that it differs in important respects from many of Lorca's other works, insofar as it attempts a series of transgressions of the traditional boundary separating stage from auditorium. The play tackles "issues of class and ideological division, of intolerance and hatred, all of them acted out in a theatre where the actors are as much the audience as the audience the actors." Lorca's experiments in this direction echo the work of Pirandello (whose "Six Characters in Search of an Author" (1921) attempted to stage a similar transgression), though Lorca develops the effect in