William Walton's first and most substantial operatic endeavor, Troilus and Cressida, underwent a long gestation period before its completion and premiere in 1954. Having recently served on a committee that aided in the restoration of opera to the Royal Opera House and Covent Garden, Walton was one of several British composers of the time who took a renewed interest in composing opera for modern English-speaking audiences. The decision to collaborate with librettist Christopher Hassall on an adaptation of the Troilus and Cressida story was made fairly early on. However, because of the composer's attention to other projects, his geographic remove from the librettist, and some health-related setbacks, several years passed before the text was entirely settled. Hassall's final version draws upon various versions of the story, from Boccaccio, to Chaucer, to Shakespeare, but finally settles on a version that depicts the Trojan prince Troilus as a faithful hero, and Cressida as a frail woman bound by the codes of medieval chivalry, though living a tale set in ancient Troy.

The various political intrigues that impede Cressida's romance with Troilus set the stage for a complex musico-dramatic treatment, romantic in its breadth, but modern in its language. Several observers have noted certain parallels with Wagner, especially in the beginning of the first and third acts, where long pedal tones create a strong center of tonal gravity against which harmonic developments dramatically resist. Biographer Frank Howe observes that, while Leitmotifs generally do not identify themselves through continual literal repetition, certain arcs and gestures do impart a Straussian sense of dramatic cohesion, often via the employment within related themes of a particular interval (such as the falling fourths that frequently accompany expressions of Cressida's love, or matchmaker Pandarus' scalar ascents in parallel thirds). A master of musical borrowings, Walton sometimes seems to indulge in referential rather than expressive text setting, evoking a mood indirectly by appropriating or mimicking familiar musical gestures or textures. Still, he does this so seamlessly and skillfully that the music effectively operates on multiple levels, including intertextual complexity and sheer emotionality. Hassall infuses his libretto with numerous ironic juxtapositions: promises made that are immediately and forcibly broken, predictions that find quick fulfillment but through unexpected means. In such instances, Walton's musical language—which is not so much timeless as anachronously noncommittal—is particularly effective, its combinations of tonal and chromatic effects, evocative and emotional references, and stylistic clarity and studied obscurity highlighting the sense of dramatic tension. While in later years this style would develop into a kind of caricature, as demonstrated, say, in the breakneck dramatic pace of The Bear (1967), in telling the tragic story of Troilus and Cressida it wears a straight face. Though some might find it problematic to read anything by the composer of the famously cynical Façade without irony, Walton nonetheless successfully illuminates the opera's emotional engagement without maintaining an ironic distance.

© Jeremy Grimshaw, All Music Guide