The Magic Skin

Giselher Klebe made an opera of it; the story has been filmed in French, Spanish and Greek. The premise — every desire granted, at the direct cost of your remaining life — has been borrowed so often that people meet it long before they meet Balzac.

What the borrowings drop is the tone. Balzac wrote it as a young man in a hurry, and it is wild, grandiose and half-mad in a way none of the polite versions attempt.

Versions are listed where they are documented. A century of stage productions and most broadcasts were never catalogued at all, so this is what can be shown rather than everything that was ever made.