Who is the coward character who plays appears in one of Shakespeare's lesser-regarded works that has been adapted for the opera on several occasions?
Ancient Pistol Ancient Pistol is a swaggering soldier who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. Though full of grandiose boasts about his prowess, he is essentially a coward. The character is introduced in "Henry IV, Part 2" and reappears in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Henry V".
Artaserse (Hasse) Artaserse is an opera ("dramma per musica") in three acts composed by Johann Adolph Hasse to an Italian libretto adapted from that by Metastasio by Giovanni Boldini. It premiered at the Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice on 11 February 1730, shortly after the libretto's first setting by Leonardo Vinci premiered in Rome 6 days earlier. Metastasio's libretto, "Artaserse", has been used in more than 90 works. Hasse himself would later re-work the score for performances at the Opernhaus am Zwinger in Dresden (1740) and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (1760).