The Miracle (play)

Vollmöller's play wordlessly tells the story of a wayward nun who deserts her convent with a knight, influenced by the music of an evil minstrel.

Charles B. Cochran, writing about Max Reinhardt in his autobiography, Showman Looks On: "Our first close association was with the creation of The Miracle, which arose from a suggestion made to him by me in the café at Budapest that he should produce for me a mystery play of the Middle Ages.... At the café table Reinhardt gave me a letter of introduction to Karl Vollmoller who, on my suggestion, prepared a scenario.

The play first appeared as a vast spectacle-pantomime directed by Max Reinhardt at the London Olympia on 21 December 1911, with principal actors, cast and musical performers numbering around 1,700.

The New York version, which opened January 16, 1924 at the Century Theatre was produced by Morris Gest, and starred Rosamond Pinchot as the Nun and Lady Diana Cooper and Maria Carmi alternating nightly in the role of the Madonna.

The poem differs from The Miracle in resetting the story in 19th-century Spain, as the 1959 film would do, and in not letting the reader know that the statue has taken the nun's place in the convent until nearly the very end.