The Death of a Composer is a series of ten opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 libretti by Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...

 dealing with the deaths of ten 20th Century composers from Anton Webern

Anton Webern

Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

 to John Lennon

John Lennon

John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...

. All ten composers left behind ten common clues related to their deaths. Greenaway was interested in this commonality and explored this in the operas, each written or to be written by a different composer. Louis Andriessen

Louis Andriessen

Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...

 finished Rosa - A Horse Drama

Rosa - A Horse Drama

The Death of a Composer: Rosa – A Horse Drama is a 1993-94 opera by Louis Andriessen on a libretto by Peter Greenaway, the sixth libretto in Greenaway's Death of a Composer series that explores the deaths of ten 20th century composers from Anton Webern to John Lennon.-Background:This opera tells...

in 1995. Geoffrey Fallthius is a fictional character

Fictional character

A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...

 from Greenaway's The Falls

The Falls

The Falls is a 1980 film directed by Peter Greenaway. It was Greenaway's first feature-length film after many years making shorts. It does not have a traditional dramatic narrative; it takes the form of a mock documentary in 92 short parts.-Plot:...

, a pupil of Tulse Luper

Tulse Luper

Tulse Luper is a fictional ornithologist, created by film director Peter Greenaway."Born in Newport, Wales in 1911, Luper was, according to Greenaway's introduction to the exhibition catalogue, in Moab, Utah in 1928 when "Uranium was 'discovered' there. He was in Antwerp in 1939 when the Germans...

. Indeed, aside from Webern and Lennon, all of the composers are fictitious.

1. Anton Webern
   Anton Webern
   Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
   
    1945
2. Samuel Bucket 1948
3. Tora Arcadio 1951
4. Portala Zick 1952
5. Antonio Marseil 1955
6. Juan Manuel de Rosa 1957
7. Erik Butlitzer 1961
8. Geoffrey Fallthuis 1968
9. Corntopia Felixchange 1974
10. John Lennon
    John Lennon
    John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
    
    1980