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
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