Composers, Actors, Orchestras

Laurence Olivier and William Walton were near contemporaries – Walton was born in 1902 and Olivier in 1907 – but despite each being famous, they had never met before their collaboration on a propaganda film project in the Second World War.

A contemporary critic wrote in 1944 that Walton’s music for Henry V was “a score that ranks with the best in film music". Four years later they collaborated again on a film of Hamlet, which another critic described as “a masterpiece of the stage made into one of the greatest of films." Their collaboration led in 1955 to another film, Richard III, which was equally well received, described in a review as “new art hand in hand with old genius”.

Michael Dobson will lead us through more than a decade of collaboration between a great actor and a great composer. He is Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham. His publications include The Making of the National Poet; England's Elizabeth (with Nicola Watson); The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (with Stanley Wells); Performing Shakespeare's Tragedies Today; and Shakespeare and Amateur Performance.