Prima le parole?

To Birmingham for a concert performance of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. It was preceded by a study day created and led by David Nice on four German operas to be performed in the city in coming weeks – Götterdämmerung, Ariadne auf Naxos, Moses und Aron and yesterday’s Rosenkavalier.

The rich heart of the study day was four presentations by leading scholars (William Mival, Michael Tanner, Stephen Johnson and David Nice himself), together with some Richard Strauss songs from Birmingham Conservatoire students (soprano Carrie-Ann Williams, baritone Samuel Oram and pianist Shah Johan bin Shahridzuan).

But the major revelation was the performance of excerpts (sans music) from the librettos of each opera by a group of our finest thespians ‒ Dame Harriet Walter and her husband Guy Paul (both above) taking the lead roles, with Daisy Boulton and Joel MacCormack as the young things.

What it showed so clearly was how persuasive and powerful Wagner himself was as a dramatist, and how brilliant was Strauss’s librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

We tend to think of operas as being predominantly the work of their composers, yet in a few cases the words are so important that we would do well to consider them fundamentally as co-creations – Da Ponte-Mozart and Hofmannsthal-Strauss top of the list, together, of course, with Wagner-Wagner. Not so sure about Schoenberg-Schoenberg.

Here is Harriet Walter as Lady Macbeth. Strong stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hREqqNr9AyI

    

Not a word to be used to Princes

It’s good to be reminded (by David Nice in a piece on artsdesk) of Queen Elizabeth’s response in 1603 to her leading minister, Robert Cecil:

Must is not a word to be used to Princes.

Cecil had been encouraging the old queen to go to bed during her final illness. Bess was not amused. But her response was the natural one to unsolicited imperatives, and not just because she was a “prince”.

“Must” so often stimulates a negative feeling, whatever one’s station in life. As do “should” and “ought”.

Encouraging Russian musicians to oppose the anti-gay laws in that country, David Nice headlines his article “When artists could speak out.” http://www.theartsdesk.com/classical-music/opinion-when-artists-could-speak-out

“Could.” So much more likely to gain assent than “must”.