The Diary of a Madman is a one-act chamber opera by the composer Humphrey Searle, who also wrote the libretto based on the eponymous short story by Nikolai Gogol.
The opera was written in London and Amalfi between April and June 1958, and was premiered at the Berlin Festival on 3 October 1958, with Scherchen conducting.
In Scene 1 ("October 3") we meet the feckless government clerk Popristchin, short of money and in love with Sophie, the daughter of his boss.
His sanity is clearly in question as he overhears a conversation between Sophie's poodle and a dachshund belonging to a passing girl (highlighted, as in most of Popritschin's future delusions, by the accompaniment of prepared electronic effects on tape).
A recording of this production made by the BBC, directed by Barbara Bray, won the radio critics prize at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in the same year.