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 trusty colleagues Claude Duval, Tom King, and Jack Rann. These narratives, which transformed Turpin from a pockmarked thug and murderer into "a gentleman of the road [and] a protector of the weak", followed a popular cultural tradition of romanticising English criminals. This practice is reflected in the ballads written about Turpin, the earliest of which, "Dick Turpin", would appear to have been published in 1737. Later ballads presented Turpin as an 18th-century Robin Hood figure: "Turpin was caught and his trial was passed, and for a game cock he died at last. Five hundred pounds he gave so free, all