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Henry Purcell. Tragic opera in three acts. 1689 or earlier.
Libretto by Nahum Tate, after his play Brutus of Alba and Virgil?s Aeneid.
First performance at Josias Priest?s school in Chelsea, London, before December 1689, with a possible earlier performance as a court masque in 1684.
Dido, the widowed Queen of Carthage, entertains the Trojan Prince Aeneas, shipwrecked on his way to Italy, where he will found a new Troy. Dido and Aeneas are in love. Witches plot Dido?s destruction and the Sorceress conjures a storm, to break out when the royal couple are hunting, and the impersonation of Mercury by one of her coven. The storm duly breaks and the courtiers hasten back to town, while the false Mercury tells Aeneas he must leave Dido and sail for Italy. Aeneas and his sailors prepare to leave, to the delight of the witches. Aeneas parts from Dido, who kills herself once he has gone, her death lamented by mourning cupids.

It has been plausibly suggested that Purcell?s short opera Dido and Aeneas was originally designed as a court masque, and possible topical political allusions have been proposed, notably in the light of the future James II?s Catholicism, seen to deflect him from his duty as a future king, a hypothetical intrigue that casts the Jesuits as witches. The work owes something to John Blow?s Venus and Adonis of 1683. Most famous of all elements in the opera is Dido?s lament, When I am laid in earth, with its descending ground bass borrowed from current Venetian practice.

Based upon a few circumstantial details and a lot of intuition, the ultra-stern nun, Sister Aloysius Beauvier believes that one of the priests at the St. Nicholas Catholic Church and School has been molesting a 12-year-old boy named Donald Muller, the school?s only African American student. Sister Aloysius recruits a young, naive nun (Sister James) to assist her in monitoring the suspicious yet charismatic Father Flynn. She also addresses her concerns to Donald?s mother, who surprisingly is not horrified or even shocked by the allegations. (Mrs. Muller is more concerned about her son getting into high school and avoiding a beating from his dad.) The play concludes with a one-on-one confrontation between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn as she attempts to get the truth out of the priest. ?Wikipedia

Forever Plaid is an off-Broadway musical comedy written by Stuart Ross in New York in 1990 and now performed internationally. The critically acclaimed show is an affectionate revue of the close-harmony ?guy groups? (e.g. The Four Aces, The Four Freshmen) that reached the height of their popularity during the 1950s. Personifying the clean-cut genre are the Plaids. This quartet of high-school chums? earnest dreams of recording an album ended in death (literally and indeed, symbolically) in a collision with a bus filled with Catholic schoolgirls on their way to see the Beatles? American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. The play begins with the Plaids returning from the afterlife for one final chance at musical glory. ?Wikipedia

In Florence in 1299, wealthy Buoso Donati has just died, leaving his assets to the monks. His outraged heirs accept the services of Gianni Schicchi, who proposes a ruse for replacing the will disinheriting them with another one. Prepared to do anything in order to become rich, the gullible heirs will ultimately be duped by the wily Schicchi, who will abscond with the bulk of their inheritance.

Originally staged as a five-hour amateur production in a Chicago trolley barn, Grease took a satirical look at the dress, manners, morals, and music of teenagers at the beginning of the rock and roll era. The plot revolves primarily around the attraction between greaser Danny Zuko and the virtuous Sandy Dumbrowski. The show spawned such musical hits as ?Summer Nights,? ?Greased Lightning,? and ?Beauty School Dropout.? Grease opened at the Off-Broadway Eden Theatre, moved on to Broadway at the Broadhurst, and was eventually transferred to the Royale. Along the way, it enjoyed a run of 3,388 performances?a record which would stand until 1980 when it was overtaken by A Chorus Line. The original cas featured Barry Bostwick and Carole Demas. John Travolta and Olivia Newton John starred in the 1978 film version. ?Wikipedia