The Birthday of the Infanta

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The Birthday of the Infanta
Portland, ME: T.B. Mosher, 1905
Rare Book & Special Collection Division (156.9)

The ballet-pantomime, The Birthday of the Infanta, with music by John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951), was well received at its world premiere in Chicago on December 23, 1919. Infanta was presented again by the Chicago Opera in New York City on Febrary 23, 1920, at the Lexington Avenue Opera House. The basis for the ballet was a short story of Oscar Wilde, about a the dwarf who misunderstands the attention paid him by the royal Infanta. The story was inspired by the court of Philip IV of seventeenth-century Spain and the art of Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velásquez.