I have to be honest and admit that I wasn't aware of the forthcoming joint anniversary of Wagner and Verdi's birth before the producer Cherry Cookson emailed me in the summer of 2011. She had been sharp enough to notice it and make a preliminary approach to Radio 3 and to the production company Goldhawk Essential.
If I'm even honester - while I enjoy opera, I'm by no means an opera buff in general or a Wagnerian in particular. Which was a little more worrying; I imagined that taking a few liberties with Verdi's life wouldn't particularly offend his sunny Mediterranean-style followers but to tell anything but the strictest of truths about Wagner felt like it could get me into very hot Nordic water. Or maybe that should be very cold.
What didn't worry me though was the fact that the two composers never met. Radio is a great medium in the way that the writer meets the listener in a co-owned space. Both their imaginations are at work and so filling that space with something illusory is second-nature.
Cherry and I had worked together some years ago on a Radio 3 play, 'The Surprise Symphony', about an orchestra tour where the musicians kept dying in suspicious circumstances. Re-visiting the ground of comedy and music together with Cherry was an attractive proposition, though the comedy in 'One Winter's Afternoon' is more restrained.
But here, in OWA, there was something else which drew me in: the bitter-sweet period at the end of each composer's life, Wagner dying when he had finally achieved financial stability, Verdi having retired but unable to refuse the call (and the deep frustration) of another last job.
Two other key elements were the affair which Verdi may or may not have had with the soprano Teresa Stolz and his murky claim that he was in some way coerced by his publisher Ricordi into writing Otello: mystery plus room for invention - who could resist? The pairing of Ricordi and the librettist Boito as a comic duo was the icing on the cake - even if I'd made the icing myself.
On the subject of invention, I have to admit that there is no evidence whatsoever for Verdi losing the camels destined for the premiere of Aida in the siege of Paris. The idea however of them being eaten along with the other zoo animals (which is true) seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Reading the play again, I notice that I didn't take any such liberties with Wagner's life. Clearly still too scared.
- Listen to Guy Meredith's 'One Winter's Afternoon' on Sunday at 8.30pm.
