The Royal Hunt of the Sun

The Royal Hunt of the Sun is a 1964 play by Peter Shaffer that dramatizes the relation of two worlds entering in a conflict by portraying two characters: Atahuallpa Inca and Francisco Pizarro.

It was directed by John Dexter and designed by Michael Annals with music composed by Marc Wilkinson and movement by Claude Chagrin.

The cast was led by Robert Stephens as Atahuallpa and Colin Blakely as Francisco Pizarro and included Oliver Cotton, Graham Crowden, Paul Curran, Michael Gambon, Edward Hardwicke, Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, Robert Lang, John McEnery, Edward Petherbridge, Louise Purnell and Christopher Timothy.

In addition to its run at the Old Vic, it played at the Queen's Theatre, London, and toured to Aberdeen, Glasgow, Stratford, Leeds, Oxford and Nottingham.

In the cast were Christopher Plummer as Pizarro, David Carradine as Atahualpa, John Vernon as de Soto, Robert Aberdeen as the First Inca Indian Chieftain, and George Rose as Old Martin.

[6] The play was filmed on location by the now defunct National General Pictures studio in 1969, with Robert Shaw as Pizarro, Christopher Plummer switching roles to play Atahualpa, Nigel Davenport as Hernando De Soto, and Leonard Whiting, in his first role after Romeo and Juliet, as Young Martin (Old Martin was omitted from the film).

The production was recorded and broadcast on WOWOW television Japan, June 27 2020[8] An opera based on the play, with music and libretto by British composer Iain Hamilton, was premièred by ENO at the London Coliseum in 1977.

At the beginning of the voyage he is obsessed with chivalry, glory and honour, but becomes increasingly disillusioned throughout, as Pizarro's crisis of faith also unravels.

He wanted strange and disturbing sounds produced on primitive instruments such as saws, reed pipes, drums (tablas and bongos) and cymbals to create the aural world of 16th Century Peru.