The Little Tragedies

“Four short verse dramas written in the autumn of 1830, each a study of one passion carried to its end. A miserly old baron gloats over his chests of gold while his son goes in debt; the composer Salieri, consumed by envy, poisons his friend Mozart; Don Juan seduces the widow of the man he killed and invites the dead man's statue to supper; and in a London stricken by plague, revellers feast and sing in defiance of death.”