and have a child. He finds upon his return from the sea that, after his long absence, his wife, who believed him dead, is married happily to another man, his childhood friend Philip (Annie has known both men since her childhood, thus the rivalry), and has a child by him. Enoch's life remains unfulfilled, with one of his children now dead, and his wife and remaining children now being cared for by his onetime rival. Enoch never reveals to his wife and children that he is really alive, as he loves her too much to spoil her new happiness. Enoch dies of a broken heart. The story could be considered a variation on and antithesis to the classical myth of Odysseus, who, after an absence of 20 years at the Trojan War and at sea, found a faithful wife who had been loyally waiting for him. The use of the name Enoch for a man who disappears from the lives of his loved ones is surely inspired by the biblical character Enoch. In fact, also the entire chronological structure of the protagonist's life with its cycles related to the biblical symbolism of the "days of Creation" binds to the name of Enoch, as demonstrated by the analysis of an Italian thinker long interested in this work, and denotes Tennyson's ability to insert theological intentions into simple elegiac mode with an unprecedented complexity in English literature. Musical settings In 1897, Richard Strauss set the poem as a recitation for speaker and piano, published as his Op. 38. On 24 May 1962, Columbia Records released a recording of Enoch Arden (recorded 2–4 October 1961) with Glenn Gould on the piano and Claude Rains as the speaker. The LP was made at a cost of $1500, and only 2000 copies were released. It remains a collector's item. In 2010, Chad Bowles and David Ripley released a CD, and in 2020 a recording was made in German by pianist Kirill Gerstein and Swiss actor Bruno Ganz. Conductor Emil de Cou arranged a version for chamber orchestra and narrator. This was performed with the Virginia Chamber Orchestra and actor Gary Sloan in 2010. The British actor Christopher Kent and pianist Gamal Khamis performed a semi-staged livestream performance during the 2020 lockdown and subsequently recorded a critically acclaimed CD for SOMM Recordings, which was released in 2022. The poem is also the basis of the by