dedicated, effused over Shelley's "great sweetness of nature, and enthusiasm for good". Mary Shelley, in her note on the play, wrote that "[u]niversal approbation soon stamped The Cenci as the best tragedy of modern times." She critically assessed Act V: "The Fifth Act is a masterpiece. It is the finest thing he ever wrote, and may claim proud comparison not only with any contemporary, but preceding, poet." She noted that "Shelley wished The Cenci to be acted", intending the work, which she wrote was of "surpassing excellence", to be an acting play, not a "closet drama". Shelley sought unsuccessfully to have the play staged at Covent Garden. Byron wrote his criticisms of the play in a letter to Shelley: "I read Cenci – but, besides that I think the subject essentially un-dramatic, I am not a great admirer of our old dramatists as models. I deny that the English have hitherto had a drama at all. Your Cenci, however, was a work of power and poetry." Byron told Thomas Medwin in conversation: "The Cenci is... perhaps the best tragedy modern times have produced." William Wordsworth reportedly called the play "the greatest tragedy of the age." After seeing a performance of the play in 1886, George Bernard Shaw commented that "Shelley and Shakespeare are the only dramatists who have dealt in despair of this quality." A reviewer writing for the Literary Gazette in 1820, on the other hand, wrote that the play was "noxious", "odious", and "abominable". The taboo subjects of incest, patricide, and parricide, as well as the negative depiction of the Roman Catholic Church, however, prevented The Cenci from being staged publicly. Opera adaptations German composer Berthold Goldschmidt composed an opera in three acts based on the Shelley play in 1949 entitled Beatrice Cenci (opera) with a libretto by Martin Esslin "after Shelley's verse drama The Cenci". The opera won first prize in the Festival of Britain opera competition in 1951. The opera was first performed in 1988. A critically lauded production starring Roberta Alexander as the title heroine was staged at the Opernfest in Berlin in 1994. The first staged production of Beatrice Cenci in the UK was by the Trinity College of Music on July 9–11, 1998. In 1951, British classical composer Havergal Brian composed an opera based on the Shelley play entitled The Cenci (opera), an opera in eight scenes. The opera premiered in 1997 in