Two short fragments: an unfinished and a lost play. A Florentine Tragedy, left in a taxi (not a handbag), is Wilde's most successful attempt at tragedy - intense and domestic, with surprising depth of characterisation. It was adapted into an opera by the Austrian composer Alexander Zemlinsky in 1917. La Sainte Courtisane, or The Woman Covered in Jewels explores one of Wilde's great idées fixes: the paradox of religious hedonism, pagan piety. Both plays, Wildean to their core, revel in the profound sadness that is the fruit of the conflict between fidelity and forbidden love. Written towards the end of his tragic life, these fragments give us a glimpse of a genius at his best: visceral, passionate, personal, poetic.
"The Fisherman and his Soul" is a fairy tale first published in November of 1891 in Wilde's "A House of Pomegranates". It tells of a fisherman who nets and falls in love with a mermaid. But to be with her he must shed his soul, which goes off to have adventures of its own. Will forbidden love endure?
A House of Pomegranates is the title of the second collection of Fairy Tales by Oscar Wilde. This book contains four tales: 1. "The Young King"; which is about taking responsibility. 2. "The Birthday of the Infanta"; a commentary on the unfeeling behaviour of the upper classes. 3. "The Fisherman and his Soul"; is about the triumph of love in adversity. And 4. "The Star-Child"; which is about responsibility and doing what is right despite the cost.
Oscar Wilde said of his story The Happy Prince that it was "an attempt to treat a tragic modern problem in a form that aims at delicacy and imaginative treatment; it is a reaction against the purely imitative character of modern art." His Fairy Tales then were only partly written for children and as he said, "partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy, and who find in simplicity a subtle strangeness".In The Happy Prince and The Nightingale and the Rose, Wilde explores love and self sacrifice. The Selfish Giant will not let the children in his garden but repents and is redeemed. The Miller in the Devoted Friend is not only selfish but an egotistical hypocrite. The Remarkable Rocket is also a tale about egotism and conceit.
This is a letter written from prison in 1897 by Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, in which he recounts how he came to be in prison and charts his spiritual development.
A modern American family move into a traditionally drafty and very haunted English mansion. So far so good but anyone knowing Wilde can expect twists and turns to make it interesting. In this cast the crusty old ghost has a tough time convincing the family he exists and then in frightening them. This is extremely frustrating of course to him and as the protagonist of the story, takes matters into his hands to deal with the upstart and irreverent new tenants.
In 1895, Oscar Wilde was sentenced to 2 years of hard labor for acts of `gross indecency'. During his time at Reading Gaol, he witnessed a rare hanging, and in the three years between his release and his untimely death in 1900, was inspired to write the following poem, a meditation on the death penalty and the importance of forgiveness, even for something as heinous as murdering one's spouse; for even the murderer, Wilde argues, is human and suffers more so for being the cause of his own pain, for `having killed the thing he loved'; for everyone is the cause of someone else's suffering and suffers at the hands of another. It is this that Jesus Christ could see; he could continue to see the beauty of our humanity, despite all that we may do to each other, and encouraged us to love each other just the same "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" was published in 1898 and would gain Wilde greater recognition as a poet ; although his only other volume of poetry, one of his earliest works that he'd published, was also well-received. Sadly, `The Ballad' would be his last..
A compendium of Oscar Wilde's wit, including some of his most famous epigrams as well as unpublished quotations supplied by his friends. The book is formatted as a calendar, with one saying for each day of the year, and was edited by Wildean scholar, Stuart Mason (born Christopher Sclater Millard). - Summary by Rob Marland
"This is a solo recording of the play, meaning that all parts including stage directions are performed by one person. LibriVox has three excellent dramatic recordings with all the parts played by different people so if that is more to your taste, please listen to them.
Little needs to be said about the play itself, a sparkling example of Wilde's amazing ability to poke fun at almost everyone while making you laugh out loud at the witty sayings sprinkled throughout the acts. As to the plot, if you don't know it already, let me just say that it involves two young English men who fall madly and instantly in love with two young English.women who of course love them back mainly because their name is Earnest. Unfortunately, that is not their names and there are many bumps and crashes on the road to the happy wedding bells. I only hope I have done justice to this jewel of a play. Please listen and enjoy !"
