Lord Byron (opera)

Lord Byron (opera)

Lord Byron is an opera in three acts by Virgil Thomson to an original English libretto by Jack Larson, inspired by the historical character Lord Byron. This was Thomson's third and final opera. He wrote it on commission from the Ford Foundation for the Metropolitan Opera (Met), but the Met never produced the opera. The first performance was at Lincoln Center, New York City on April 20, 1972, by the music department of the Juilliard School with John Houseman as stage director, Gerhard Samuel as the conductor and Alvin Ailey as the choreographer. A performance of a revised version, by the composer, took place in 1985 with the New York Opera Repertory Theater.

The composer himself had great affection for this opera. The premiere production received mixed reviews, with one particularly negative one from Harold C. Schonberg, including this description:

"....a very bland score, distressingly banal (all those waltzes!) and frequently gagglingly cutesy."

The opera has not yet received a full-scale professional production. Monadnock Music performed the opera in September 1991.