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 It is only in a Shandean spirit that my matter can be approached. I have to describe something as odd and whimsical as ever entered the brain of Sterne; and if I could, I would gladly lead you to the same affection for my father as you have for Tristram's. Christopher Morley, Editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, wrote a preface to the Limited Edition Club issue of Sterne's classic. That preface appears in Morley's book "Streamlines" published by Doubleday - Doran in 1932, and is titled "Tristram Shandy". In the Hermann Hesse novel "The Journey to the East",