The Duchess of Malfi (disambiguation)

The Duchess of Malfi is a macabre, tragic play, written by the English dramatist John Webster and first performed in 1614.

The Duchess of Malfi may also refer to:

The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi (originally published as The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy) is a macabre, tragic play written by the English dramatist John Webster in 1612–13. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then before a more general audience at The Globe, in 1613–14.

Published in 1623, the play is loosely based on events that occurred between about 1508 and 1513. The Duchess was Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi (d. 1511), whose father, Enrico d'Aragona, Marquis of Gerace, was an illegitimate son of Ferdinand I of Naples. As in the play, she secretly married Antonio Beccadelli di Bologna after the death of her first husband Alfonso I Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi.

The play begins as a love story, with a Duchess who marries beneath her class, and ends as a nightmarish tragedy as her two brothers exact their revenge, destroying themselves in the process. Jacobean drama continued the trend of stage violence and horror set by Elizabethan tragedy, under the influence of Seneca. The complexity of some of its characters, particularly Bosola and the Duchess, plus Webster's poetic language, ensure the play is often considered among the greatest tragedies of English renaissance drama.

The Duchess of Malfi (opera)

The Duchess of Malfi is an opera in three acts by the British composer Stephen Oliver, based on the eponymous play by John Webster. Oliver originally wrote this opera, his ninth in 1971, at age 21, for a production at the Oxford Playhouse on commission from the Oxford University Opera Club. The premiere was on November 23, 1971, with the following cast members:

Oliver then rewrote the work, and the revised version received its US premiere at Santa Fe Opera on August 5, 1978.

Roles

Synopsis

The play is set in the court of Malfi (Amalfi), Italy. The young Duchess has recently been widowed, but her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, do not wish her to share their inheritance with a new spouse. They thus forbid her from remarrying. The brothers place Daniel de Bosola in her household as a spy. Nonetheless, the Countess falls in love with Antonio, her steward, and they secretly marry. Eventually, the brothers discover the marriage and imprison their sister. In the climatic duel, Bosola and Ferdinand wind up killing each other.

The Duchess of Malfi (Brecht)

The Duchess of Malfi is an adaptation by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht of the English seventeenth-century tragedy by John Webster. He collaborated with H. R. Hays and Anglo American poet, W. H. Auden. It was written during Brecht's period of exile in the United States. In premiered in New York, in 1946.

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