(The Ban on Love, WWV 38), is an early comic opera in two acts by Richard Wagner, with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Described as a , it was composed in early 1836. Restrained sexuality versus eroticism plays an important role in ; themes that recur throughout much of Wagner's output, most notably in Tannhäuser, Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde. In each opera, the self-abandonment to love brings the lovers into mortal combat with the surrounding social order. In , because it is a comedy, the outcome is a happy one: unrestrained sexuality wins as the carnival of the entire population goes rioting on after curtain-fall. Wagner's second opera, and his first to be performed, has many signs of an early work: the style is modelled closely on contemporary French and Italian comic opera. It is also referred to as the forgotten comedy, in that only two of Wagner's works are comedies, the other being Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Performance history Wagner conducted the premiere in 1836 at the Stadttheater Magdeburg. Poorly attended and with a lead singer who forgot the words and had to improvise, it was a resounding flop and its second performance had to be cancelled after a fist fight between the prima donna's husband and the lead tenor broke out backstage before the curtain had even risen; only three people were in the audience. It was never performed again in Wagner's lifetime. The opera was rarely performed in the following hundred years. In the United Kingdom, the first performance was given on 16 February 1965 at University College, London, in a semi-professional production staged by the UCLU Music Society in the old Gymnasium. In 1994 was performed at the Wexford Opera Festival, in Ireland. In North America a successful revival was given in 1983, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch. In 1990, a staged production (with reduced orchestra) was mounted in San Francisco by Pocket Opera, led by, and with an English performing translation by, Donald Pippin. A fully staged production was premiered on 19 July 2008, by Glimmerglass Opera, in a production by Nicholas Muni, at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York, USA. The cast was led by Mark Schnaible as Friedrich and Claudia Waite as Isabella; Corrado Rovaris conducted. In 2009, a concert production was presented at the International Festival of Young Singers at the Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg