Paradise Lost is an opera in two acts with music by Krzysztof Penderecki and an English libretto by Christopher Fry. The opera is based on the epic poem of the same name by Milton. Penderecki himself characterized the work as a Sacra Rappresentazione (sacred representation) rather than an opera. He wrote the opera on commission for the 1976 US Bicentennial celebrations. The first performance was given on 29 November 1978, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The same production was given at La Scala, Milan in 1979.
The opera is set in heaven, hell, and on earth at the dawn of creation, and is divided into 42 scenes.
Famous quotes containing the words paradise and/or lost:
“I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.”
—Jean Rostand (1894–1977)
“I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)