The characters in the opera The Visitors are escaping the Black Death by sheltering in a villa outside what city
The Visitors (opera) The Visitors is an opera in three acts and a prologue composed by Carlos Chávez to an English libretto by the American poet Chester Kallman. The work was Chávez's only opera. Its first version, with the title "Panfilo and Lauretta", premiered in New York City in 1957. The final version with the title "The Visitors" was premiered in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1999, twenty years after the composer's death. The story is set in 14th century Tuscany during the time of the Black Death. The libretto (like those for "Pagliacci" and "Ariadne auf Naxos") uses the device of a play within a play to reflect and intensify the relationships between the protagonists, who in this case are loosely based on characters in "The Decameron".
Requiem (Michael Haydn) Michael Haydn wrote the Missa pro defuncto Archiepiscopo Sigismondo, or more generally Missa pro Defunctis, Klafsky I:8, MH 155, following the death of the Count Archbishop Sigismund von Schrattenbach in Salzburg in December 1771. Haydn completed the Requiem before the year was over, signing it "S[oli] D[eo] H[onor] et G[loria.] Salisburgi 31 Dicembre 1771." At the beginning of that year, his daughter Aloisia Josefa died. Historians believe "his own personal bereavement" motivated the composition. Contemporary materials which have survived to the present day include the autograph score found in Berlin, a set of copied parts with lots of corrections in Haydn's hand in Salzburg and another set at the Esterházy castle in Eisenstadt, and a score prepared by the Salzburg copyist Nikolaus Lang found in Munich.