A Village Romeo and Juliet

A Village Romeo and Juliet is an opera by Frederick Delius, the fourth of his six operas. The composer, with his wife Jelka, wrote the English-language libretto based on the novellla Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe by Swiss author Gottfried Keller from his collection Seldwyla Folks (Die Leute von Seldwyla). Keller was inspired by a newspaper notice about the suicide of a young couple; he then set the story in a Swiss village torn by a feud between two neighbouring families, similar to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.