BBC Commissions an Opera

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 469, 18 June 1948, Page 19

BBC Commissions an Opera

HE BBC has commissioned Dr. Wil- *" liam Walton, one of the foremost of the younger school of British composers, to write an opera for broadcasting. The opera will, in due course, be given its first performance on the air. It will be in three acts, and the libretto, written by the young poet Christopher Hassal in collaboration with the composer, will be on the theme of Troilus and Cressida, though it will not use the Shakespearean text or follow the play. The commissioning of an opera is an interesting innovation in radio, for. although the BBC has commissioned plays and musical works, this will be the first opera specially written for broadcasting. Troilus and Cressida will be William Walton’s first opera. He has already written a noteworthy Symphony, a Viola Concerto, and a Violin Concerto, all of which are familiar to listeners here through recordings, although the compositions by which he is perhaps best known are his Crown Imperial March, written for the Coronation, Facade (settings of five poems by Edith Sitwell), and the choral Belshazzar’s Feast. In recent years Walton has written a good deal of film music, notably the Spitfire Prelude and Fugue for The First of the Few, and the musical scores for Sir Laurence Olivier’s two Shakespearean films Henry V. and Hamlet.