Falstaff (opera) knight, Sir John Falstaff, to seduce two married women to gain access to their husbands' wealth. Verdi was concerned about working on a new opera at his advanced age, but he yearned to write a comic work and was pleased with Boito's draft libretto. It took the collaborators three years from mid-1889 to complete. Although the prospect of a new opera from Verdi aroused immense interest in Italy and around the world, "Falstaff" did not prove to be as popular as earlier works in the composer's canon. After the initial performances in Italy, other European countries and the US, the
Plays of Three Decades "A Preface to the Plays Including Certain Personal Reflections." The introduction includes information about Ardrey's personal relationship to the theater, but it is mainly concerned with detailing the history of the avant garde theater movement of 1930's New York which Ardrey identifies the plays as belonging to. An "avant garde" theatre occurs when enough skeptical artists raise their voices in a common tune. The three plays presented in this volume might be dedicated to that "avant garde" theatre of which they were a part and which, born in the 1930's, died prematurely soon after the Second World War and like