Claude Duval (opera) Claude Duval (opera) Claude Duval – or Love and Larceny is a comic opera with music by Edward Solomon to a libretto by Henry Pottinger Stephens. The plot is loosely based on supposed events in the life of the seventeenth century highwayman, Claude Duval. The piece was first produced at the Olympic Theatre, London, on 24 August 1881, under the management of Michael Gunn. It ran until the end of October. From January to March 1882, a D'Oyly Carte touring company played the work in the British provinces. Another D'Oyly Carte company played it in New York in March and
Dick Turpin around the turn of the 19th century. It was, however, the story of a fabled ride from London to York that provided the impetus for 19th-century author William Harrison Ainsworth to include and embellish the exploit in his 1834 novel "Rookwood". Ainsworth used Turpin as a plot device, describing him in a manner that makes him more lively than the book's other characters. Turpin is introduced with the pseudonym Palmer, and is later forced to escape on his horse, Black Bess. Although fast enough to keep ahead of those in pursuit, Black Bess eventually dies under the stress of the