Shakuntala (play)
Abandoned at birth by her parents, Śakuntalā is reared in the secluded hermitage of the sage Kaṇva, and grows up a comely but innocent maiden.
One day, the anger-prone sage Durvāsa arrives when Śakuntala is lost in her thoughts, and when she fails to attend to him, he curses her by bewitching Duṣyanta into forgetting her existence.
[citation needed] Shakuntala was the first Indian drama to be translated into a Western language, by Sir William Jones in 1789.
[11] Sacontalá or The Fatal Ring, Sir William Jones' translation of Kālidāsa's play, was first published in Calcutta, followed by European republications in 1790, 1792 and 1796.
[13][14][15] Goethe published an epigram about Shakuntala in 1791, and in his Faust he adopted a theatrical convention from the prologue of Kālidāsa's play.
[18] When Leopold Schefer became a student of Antonio Salieri in September 1816, he had been working on an opera about Shakuntala for at least a decade, a project which he did however never complete.
[19] Franz Schubert, who had been a student of Salieri until at least December of the same year, started composing his Sakuntala opera, D 701, in October 1820.
[19][20] Johann Philipp Neumann based the libretto for this opera on Kālidāsa's play, which he probably knew through one or more of the three German translations that had been published by that time.
[9] A ballet version of Kālidāsa's play, Sacountalâ, on a libretto by Théophile Gautier and with music by Ernest Reyer, was first performed in Paris in 1858.
[22][25] A plot summary of the play was printed in the score edition of Karl Goldmark's Overture to Sakuntala, Op.
[34] The work was staged at the Greenwich Village Theatre in New York in 1919 with Beatrice Prentice as Śakuntalā, Frank Conroy as Kaṇva (also director for the production), Joseph Macauley as King Duṣyanta, Grace Henderson as Gautami, and Harold Meltzer as Matali.
[citation needed] Norwegian electronic musician Amethystium wrote a song called "Garden of Sakuntala" which can be found on the CD Aphelion.
In Koodiyattam, the only surviving ancient Sanskrit theatre tradition, prominent in the state of Kerala on India, performances of Kālidāsa's plays are rare.
However, Internationally recognised Kutiyattam artist and Natyashastra scholar Nātyāchārya Vidūshakaratnam Padma Shri Guru Māni Mādhava Chākyār has choreographed a Koodiyattam production of The Recognition of Sakuntala.
[39][failed verification] A production directed by Tarek Iskander was mounted for a run at London's Union Theatre in January and February 2009.
These films mostly under the title of the heroine (Shakuntala) include ones in: 1920 by Suchet Singh, 1920 by Shree Nath Patankar, 1929 by Fatma Begum, 1931 by Mohan Dayaram Bhavnani, 1931 by J.J. Madan, 1932 by Sarvottam Badami, 1932 Hindi film, 1940 by Ellis Dungan, 1941 by Jyotish Bannerjee, 1943 by Shantaram Rajaram Vankudre, 1961 by Bhupen Hazarika, 1965 by Kunchacko, 1966 by Kamalakara Kameswara Rao, and 2023 by Gunasekhar.
[40][41] A television film, titled Shakuntalam, was an adaptation of the play by Indian theatre director Vijaya Mehta.
[42] Bharat Ek Khoj, a 1988 Indian historical drama television series by Shyam Benegal based on Jawaharlal Nehru's The Discovery of India (1946), included a two part adaptation of the play and Kalidasa's life which aired on DD National.
