One of the earliest stage productions to feature the fall of the empress was "The Tragedy of Messalina" (1639) by Nathanael Richards, where she is depicted as a monster and used as a foil to attack the Roman Catholic wife of the English king Charles I. She is treated as equally villainous in the Venetian Pietro Zaguri's "La Messalina" (1656). This was a 4-act prose tragedy with four songs, described as an "opera scenica", that revolved around the affair with Gaius Silius that brought about her death. Carlo Pallavicino was to follow with a full blown Venetian opera in 1679 that combined eroticism with morality.