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.
Exit the King seems to me to be the most important thing we can do, since we’re all of us dying men who refuse to die. This play is an attempt at an apprenticeship in dying". Les Essif in "Empty Figure on an Empty Stage" points out that "Exit the King" comes closest of all Ionesco’s plays to the paradigm of absurdism established by Samuel Beckett. Though Beckett and Ionesco are commonly grouped together under the name "Theatre of the Absurd" because of their shared themes of alienation and the difficulty of communication, Beckett’s plays generally present a stripped down, minimalist tableau whereas