Tristram Shandy (opera) Tristram Shandy (opera) Tristram Shandy is an unfinished opera project by Michael Nyman based on his favorite novel, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", by Laurence Sterne, begun in 1981. The project has been perpetually on hold for want of a commission, but at least five excerpts of the opera have been performed publicly, and one has been released on a commercial recording. The first excerpt of the opera appeared in 1983: "I'll Stake My Cremona to a Jew's Trump," (from Volume V, Chapter 15) which appeared in an eponymous short documentary by Sara Jolly. It was written
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Sterne incorporated into "Tristram Shandy" many passages taken almost word for word from Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy", Francis Bacon's "Of Death", Rabelais and many more, and rearranged them to serve the new meaning intended in "Tristram Shandy". "Tristram Shandy" was highly praised for its originality, and nobody noticed these borrowings until years after Sterne's death. The first to note them was physician and poet John Ferriar, who did not see them negatively and commented: Victorian critics of the 19th century, who were hostile to Sterne for the alleged obscenity of his prose, used Ferriar's findings to defame Sterne,