First performance 30 May 1901 Librettist Julian Sturgis Adapted from Much Ado About Nothing | Composer Charles Villiers Stanford Language English | |
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Much Ado About Nothing is an opera in four acts by Charles Villiers Stanford (his Op. 76a), to a libretto by Julian Sturgis based on Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing. It was the composer's seventh opera.
Performance history
It premiered at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 30 May 1901, conducted by Luigi Mancinelli, when it was "well, but not rapturously received by the public", and given one further performance four days later. The Manchester Guardian commented, "Not even in the Falstaff of Arrigo Boito and Giuseppe Verdi have the characteristic charm, the ripe and pungent individuality of the original comedy been more sedulously preserved."
The opera was performed in German translation in Leipzig in 1902.
It was revived at the 1964 Wexford Opera Festival in a production directed by Peter Ebert. In 2016 the Northern Opera Group performed extracts from the opera to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.