The verismo opera Andrea Chénier by Umberto Giordano makes numerous changes to the historical record:
The opera portrays Chenier as a Girondin and Girondin sympathizer as well as a Republican, and someone who is critical of royalists. The real-life Chenier was a royalist constitutional monarchist who loathed both the Girondins and the Jacobins, serving as a writer for the defense of Louis XVI during his trial. It's likely that the opera blends Andre with his Adapted Out brother Marie-Joseph Chenier who was a Republican, an ally initially of Girondins but later worked with Robespierre during his Festival of the Supreme Being, which presents its own problems.
The opera also has anachronistic touches such as Incroyables and Merveilluses in Paris during the Terror, when both of them were fashions of aristocratic and bourgeois men and women that were specifically counter-revolutionary in intent and date from the Thermidor and Directory periods. Later productions such as the 2016 David McVicar one also feature Robespierre prominently involved in Chenier's arrest and execution when at the time Robespierre was absent from the Committee of Public Safety for more than a month as a result of illness (or sulking in protest depending on the historian) and he had no involvement in the latter's death. The 2016 production also attributes a fake quote to Robespierre which justifies Chenier's death by stating "Even Plato banned the poets from his Republic" which has never been traced to any of Robespierre's speeches.
Maddalena de Coigny is based on an inmate of Chenier's but unlike the opera she survived and had many children and certainly didn't join him Together in Death.
When William Shakespeare tackles history, history usually loses. However, it's hard to fault him given his often-stated intent to entertain people. Shakespeare was patronized by the British monarchy (in spite of possibly not being a good Protestant). He knew exactly what side his bread was buttered on. It's more of a failure when modern writers use Shakespeare as a definitive historical authority, something he himself might not have appreciated.
The Winter's Tale is set during pagan times, yet features the Kingdom of Sicily (1130), the Kingdom of Bohemia (1212) and the Tsardom of Russia (1547).
Richard III is Tudor propaganda based on dubious sources. It is justifiable enough for Shakespeare to identify Richard as the man who gave the order for the death of his nephews, since to this day we don't know exactly who did it. But he hugely exaggerates Richard's deformity, calling him a hunchback when actually Richard had scoliosis, and inventing a withered arm out of nowhere. Much of what he says about Richard III was already "Common Knowledge" at this point.
Macbeth changes Duncan from a young, violent invader to a wise old king, telescopes Macbeth's 17-year reign into two years, creates Lady Macbeth almost from whole cloth, and reimagines the Stuart family tree.
King James was supposedly descended from Banquo through his son Fleance. Macbeth was commissioned by James, who paid Shakespeare a king's ransom to write and stage it. Naturally Shakespeare would throw in things that would please James. This is also why at the end of the original play, Shakespeare put on another play showing the descent of the Stuarts from Fleance through to James VI. Total nonsense, but James and Shakespeare both liked it.
Hal's single combat with Hotspur at the Battle of Shrewsbury in Henry IV: Part 1 is a total dramatic fabrication. Not only does Shakespeare portray them as the same age when Hotspur was really decades older, but in reality, rather than personally cross swords, both men were felled by arrows to the face (Henry barely survived; Hotspur wasn't so lucky).
Many people believe that Sir John Falstaff was a historical person because of his inclusion in ''Henry IV Parts 1 and 2". Although he may have been very loosely based on an old Stratford acquaintance of Shakespeare's, Falstaff himself is wholly fictional.
Sir John Fastolf was a very real knight of the Garter who was a contemporary of Henry V (and long outlived him). To what extent he was the inspiration for Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff is debated to this day.
The character was originally named John Oldcastle, after a real 15th century person. Since Oldcastle had well-connected descendants, Shakespeare had to change the name.
The Romans in Julius Caesar, who wore nightcaps and used clocks.
As well as the entire events of Caesar's murder, burial, and arrival of Octavius all being compressed into the same day, the actual events occurring within the period of a month.
And Caesar saying "For I am constant as the Northern Star"; the location in the sky of the North Celestial Pole varies due to the Precession of the Equinoxes, and in Roman times it wasn't near any star.
Shakespeare has King John say, "The thunder of my cannon shall be heard" in France. The first English cannons were used at the battle of Crécy in 1346 – 130 years after the death of King John. Cannon are also mentioned in Hamlet which is set in the 11th century, well before gunpowder was introduced in Europe.
Shakespeare's portrayal of Henry V as a wild vagabond when he was the heir to the throne is also inaccurate. Henry was the same duty bound, serious man his whole life.
William Shakespeare admits this himself at the end of Henry V, when the Chorus delivers an epilogue in which he basically apologizes for the use of Artistic License – History.
Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen, Our bending author hath pursued the story, In little room confining mighty men, Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.
Christopher Marlowe, an Elizabethan dramatist who influenced Shakespeare, was also prone to this. In his Tamburlaine plays, the eponymous (anachronistic) Scythian conqueror ("Tamburlaine" was Turkic, not Scythian) takes control of the Persian Empire (which ceased to exist in 330 BCE, unless he meant the contemporary Safavid Empire, which did not exist in "Tamburlaine's" time) by capturing its capital, Persepolis (which was burned down by Alexander the Great over a millennium earlier), capturing the King of Turkey (which was a sultanate) and marrying the daughter of the Egyptian (Mamluk) Sultan, Zenocrate (who, aside from being invented, has a Greek name).
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Real history is mixed in with the story of the seventh president's fame as an emo rock star, but there's quite a bit of (presumably) entirely intentional inaccuracy.
For starters, Abigail Williams and most of the other accusers were children around 10-12 years old, not in their late teens as they are in the play (Mary Warren was the only one who really was 17) — Miller himself admitted to changing some characters' ages. Also, while the girls' true motives are unknown, Abigail did not have an affair with John Proctor (again, she was 12), so it's a safe bet that it wasn't a scheme to Murder the Hypotenuse. In fact, the whole idea that the entirety of the Salem Witch Trials was born from a plot by Abigail is extremely questionable; for one thing, the whole situation is generally believed to have been a lot more complicated and less deliberate than that, but also, if any one girl could be pointed to as any sort of ringleader or the one who started it, historical records suggest that it was most likely Ann Putnam and/or Betty Parris, not Abigail.
While it is true that Giles Corey died while being pressed, they were already convinced that he was a witch, and that's how the law saw his death.
John and Elizabeth Proctor were much more active in trying to stop the nonsense, and this is likely what actually led to them being accused. However, their ultimate fates are accurate: John was hanged, while Elizabeth was spared as she was pregnant and the law required that she be allowed to live long enough to give birth, and by the time she would have been eligible to be executed, the hysteria had run its course and she was released.
Its attempt to connect the Salem Witch trials to the Red Scare, which — in spite of its justification in pointing out some facts — has opened it up to a counterattack by those who point out that Communist spies in the Western governments were not imaginary creatures. However, the analogy does hold in regards to many other aspects, such as the fact that people were targeted and accused for questionable reasons as well as that the targets were assumed to be guilty and were given no avenue to prove their innocence.
Claudio Monteverdi's opera 'L'Incoronazione di Poppea', dramatises the Roman Emperor Nero's adulterous affair with, marriage to and crowning of Poppea Sabina. Busenello, the librettist, based the story on the histories of Tacitus, taking a lot of liberties (removing some important characters, adding invented ones, condensing the events of several months into a single day) for which he was neither ashamed nor apologetic; when the libretto was published in his collected works, his synopsis included the line 'here we represent these actions differently'.
When Handel's opera Serse was premiered, its creators were disarmingly up-front about most of the story being made up, despite the title character being a historical King of Persia: "Some imbicilities, and the temerity of Xerxes (such as his being deeply enamour’d with a plane tree, and the building of a bridge over the Hellespont to unite Asia to Europe) are the basis of the story, the rest is fiction."
1776... apart from the fact that it's Founding Fathers singing and dancing about independence? The show is actually fairly accurate to history as it was known at the time, with many things taken from the writings of the people involved, but there are some digressions explained in the book:
Many of the Congressmen were cut because there were over fifty of them and they just wouldn't fit. Some of Sam Adams' traits were combined with his cousin John, including his eerily accurate prediction of The American Civil War.
The Declaration wasn't actually decided as a stalling tactic. In a surprisingly sensible move, Congress voted on independence first and debated over the wording later.
Martha Jefferson didn't visit Jefferson in Philadelphia. (The actual reason Jefferson was so anxious to get home was because she was quite ill at the time.)
Unanimity was not an official condition of independence, but it was understood that they all needed to do it for the reasons Hancock stated.
The final vote didn't come down to the issue of slavery and a Southern walkout. To a modern audience, the issue had to be addressed—it was a fundamental hypocrisy that later ripped the country apart. Plus, Franklin pointing out that they were also Americans was pointed in an era where phrases like "un-American" were freely hurled at political opponents. In reality, Congress removed the anti-slavery clause without that much fuss, quietly passing the buck to the next generation.
In general, details were moved around and filled in when they were absent. Today, historians believe that James Wilson was similar to Lyman Hall, being a committed independence man who only delayed his vote so he could check with his constituents. But when the play was written, all they could find was that he'd abruptly switched his vote, so they wrote him as an indecisive Yes-Man to Dickinson.
The play China Doll, dramatizing the career of Chinese-American star Anna May Wong was noted for several baffling inaccuracies.
The play is correct in showing a scene where the Anna May Wong name is a Meaningful Rename - where she anglicises her Chinese name. It is incorrect in having her original name be Wang Jun May; it was Wong Liu Tsong.
A scene has her saying she's been asked to take a one-line bit part in the film version of Flower Drum Song. The part she was actually offered (and would have played before she died) was Madam Liang - a prominent supporting role who has one major song to herself ("Chop Suey").
The play portrays The Thief of Bagdad (1924) as being Anna May's Star-Making Role. While it was a prominent early role in her career, her first big role was The Toll of the Sea. In fact, she was the lead in that and only a supporting character in The Thief of Bagdad. Douglas Fairbanks cast her because he'd seen her in The Toll of the Sea.
Antonio Vivaldi's opera Scanderbeg, like many other baroque operas, completely disregards historical fact in favor of the Rule of Drama.
In the opera, Sultan Murad holds Skanderbeg's wife Donika captive. Real-life Skanderbeg really was married to Donika Arianiti, but the wedding took place several months after the death of Sultan Murad, and there is no evidence to suggest Murad and Donika ever interacted.
In the opera, Sultan Murad has one daughter called Asteria. In real life, he is known to have had several daughters, but none of them by the name of Asteria.
In the opera, the Sultan is killed in the Siege of Kruja. The siege really happened and really was unsuccessful, but the Sultan survived it and died of an illness several months later.
