PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: libretto
British playwright
W.S. Gilbert, English playwright and humorist best known for his collaboration with Arthur Sullivan in comic operas. Gilbert began to write in an age of rhymed couplets, puns, and travesty; his early work...
Chinese American writer
Ha Jin, Chinese American writer who used plain, unadorned English prose to explore the tension between the individual and the family, the modern and the traditional, and personal feelings and duty. Jin...
Chinese author
Tian Han, Chinese playwright and poet known for his expressive and powerful one-act plays. Tian wrote librettos for traditional Chinese opera when he was a teenager. He studied for several years in Japan,...
Austrian author
Ingeborg Bachmann, Austrian author whose sombre, surreal writings often deal with women in failed love relationships, the nature of art and humanity, and the inadequacy of language. Bachmann grew up in...
Northern Irish poet
Paul Muldoon, Northern Irish poet whose oeuvre covered both intensely personal and political terrain—from his wife’s miscarriage to the conflict in Northern Ireland. Muldoon’s father was a labourer and...
American screenwriter and songwriter
Alan Jay Lerner, American librettist and lyricist who collaborated with composer Frederick Loewe on the hit Broadway musicals Brigadoon (1947), Paint Your Wagon (1951), My Fair Lady (1956), and Camelot...
American playwright and journalist
George S. Kaufman, American playwright and journalist, who became the stage director of most of his plays and musical comedies after the mid-1920s. He was the most successful craftsman of the American...
Argentine writer
Manuel Mujica Láinez, popular Argentine writer whose novels and short stories are best known for their masterful and fascinating blend of myth and fantasy with historical figures and events. Mujica Láinez...
Australian writer
Randolph Stow, Australian novelist and poet noted for his economical style and great powers of description. Stow’s first novel, A Haunted Land (1956), a wild, almost Gothic tale, appeared in the same year...
Australian author
David Malouf, Australian poet and novelist of Lebanese and English descent whose work reflects his ethnic background as well as his Queensland childhood and youth. Malouf received a B.A. with honours from...
American lyricist, librettist and producer
Oscar Hammerstein II, American lyricist, musical comedy author, and theatrical producer influential in the development of musical comedy and known especially for his immensely successful collaboration...
Polish poet
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Polish poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist whose reputation rests largely on his achievements in new poetic forms. Iwaszkiewicz studied law at the University of Kiev from 1912...
French author
Ludovic Halévy, French librettist and novelist who, in collaboration with Henri Meilhac, wrote the librettos for most of the operettas of Jacques Offenbach and who also wrote satiric comedies about contemporary...
Bavarian playwright
Emanuel Schikaneder, prominent German actor, singer, playwright, and theatre manager now chiefly remembered as the librettist of Mozart’s opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). Schikaneder began his...
Portuguese writer
Antônio José da Silva, Portuguese writer whose comedies, farces, and operettas briefly revitalized the Portuguese theatre in a period of dramatic decadence. Silva was born in Brazil, the son of Jews. Though...
American lyricist
Ira Gershwin, American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, George Gershwin, on more than 20 Broadway musicals and motion pictures until George’s death (1937) and who later collaborated...
American poet
Cynthia Macdonald, American poet who employed a sardonic, often flippant tone and used grotesque imagery to comment on the mundane. Lee was educated at Bennington (Vermont) College (B.A., 1950); Mannes...
American executive and songwriter
Howard Dietz, American motion-picture executive and songwriter. After graduating from Columbia University in 1917, Dietz joined the Philip Goodman Advertising Agency, where he was assigned to devise a...
Italian poet
Ranieri Calzabigi, Italian poet, librettist, and music theorist who exerted an important influence on Christoph Willibald Gluck’s reforms in opera. During the 1750s, Calzabigi formed an association with...