the play, 1964 premiered at Metropol Theater Berlin. According to a study by Robert Tanitch, by 2002, there had been at least eight adaptations of the play as a musical, though "never with conspicuous success". The earliest such version was a 1927 American show entitled Oh Earnest. The journalist Mark Bostridge comments, "The libretto of a 1957 musical adaptation, Half in Earnest, deposited in the British Library, is scarcely more encouraging. The curtain rises on Algy, strumming away at the piano, singing, 'I can play Chopsticks, Lane'. Other songs include 'A Bunburying I Must Go'." Gerald Barry created the 2011 opera, The Importance of Being Earnest, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Barbican Centre in London. It premiered in Los Angeles in 2011. The stage premiere was given by the Opéra national de Lorraine in Nancy, France in 2013. In 2017, Odyssey Opera of Boston presented a fully staged production of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's opera The Importance of Being Earnest as part of their Wilde Opera Nights series, which was a season-long exploration of operatic works inspired by the writings and world of Oscar Wilde. The opera for two pianos, percussion, and singers was composed in 1961-2. It is filled with musical quotes at every turn. The opera was never published, but it was performed twice: the premiere in Monte Carlo (1972 in Italian) and La Guardia, NY (1975). Odyssey Opera was able to obtain the manuscript from the Library of Congress with the permission of the composer's granddaughter. After Odyssey's production at the Wimberly Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts on 17 and 18 March, being received with critical acclaim, The Boston Globe stated "Odyssey Opera recognizes 'The Importance of Being Earnest.'" Stage pastiche In 2016 Irish actor/writers Helen Norton and Jonathan White wrote the comic play To Hell in a Handbag which retells the story of Importance from the point of view of the characters Canon Chasuble and Miss Prism, giving them their own back story and showing what happens to them when they are not on stage in Wilde's play. Radio and television There have been many radio versions of the play. In 1925 the BBC broadcast an adaptation with Hesketh Pearson as Jack Worthing. Further broadcasts of the play followed in 1927 and 1936. In 1977, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the four-act version of the play, with Fabia Drake as Lady