People who write words for opera end to tell you it’s a thankless task. The text is always secondary to the music, which invariably drowns it. And as WH Auden said, words to a composer are like infantrymen to a Chinese general. Expendable. All of which explains why libretto writing has rarely attracted authors of distinction.
But one who did brave the task was Auden himself. And by chance, the two most significant libretti he produced were both playing in London last week: The Rake’s Progress (for Stravinsky) and Paul Bunyan (for Benjamin Britten).
