Love's Labour's Lost is an opera by Nicolas Nabokov, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name.
While Nabokov was in New York, preparing a ballet revival, Lincoln Kirstein initiated talks with W. H. Auden who was looking for an opera project and had already contacted Michael Tippett and Harrison Birtwistle.
[1] The composer read Shakespeare's play Love's Labour's Lost again, and found similarities to Mozart's Così fan tutte in its "stylized, deliberately artificial plot".
[3] The librettists agreed to focus on the scenes around the couples, and Nabokov planned a "tender, lyrical, gay, but fairly small-scale opera".
A German version, Verlorene Liebesmüh, was written by Claus H. Henneberg,[6] but performances in Berlin shortly after the premiere were in English, because the singers were reluctant to learn yet another language.