In addition, W. H. Auden's The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest was a source.
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It is based on a short story of the same name by Italo Calvino, but incorporates excerpts from Friedrich Einsiedel's 1778 libretto (as reworked by Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter between 1790 and 1791) for an opera based on Shakespeare's The Tempest.