139-613: Gloriana , Op. 53, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten to an English libretto by William Plomer , based on Lytton Strachey 's 1928 Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History . The first performance was presented at the Royal Opera House , London, in 1953 during the celebrations of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II . Gloriana was the name given by the 16th-century poet Edmund Spenser to his character representing Queen Elizabeth I in his poem The Faerie Queene . It became
278-460: A Pacifist March to words by Ronald Duncan for the Peace Pledge Union , of which, as a pacifist, he had become an active member; the work was not a success and was soon withdrawn. The best known of his compositions from this period is probably Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge for string orchestra, described by Matthews as the first of Britten's works to become a popular classic. It
417-572: A dame school , run by the Misses Astle. The younger sister, Ethel, gave him piano lessons; in later life he said that he remained grateful for the excellence of her teaching. The following year he moved on to a prep school , South Lodge , Lowestoft, as a day boy . The headmaster, Thomas Sewell, was an old-fashioned disciplinarian; the young Britten was outraged at the severe corporal punishments frequently handed out, and later he said that his lifelong pacifism probably had its roots in his reaction to
556-525: A Theme by Frank Bridge for full orchestra for the Frederick Ashton ballet Le Rêve de Léonor (1949), but he later described the teacher–pupil relationship as "beneficial five per cent to [Britten] and ninety-five per cent to me!" Throughout the 1950s Britten continued to write operas. Billy Budd (1951) was well received at its Covent Garden premiere and was regarded by reviewers as an advance on Peter Grimes . Gloriana (1953), written to mark
695-700: A bar and cloakroom. The Linbury is most notable for hosting performances of experimental and independent dance and music, by independent companies and as part of the ROH2, the contemporary producing arm of the Royal Opera House. The Linbury Studio Theatre regularly stages performances by the Royal Ballet School and also hosts the Young British Dancer of the Year competition. The venue was constructed as part of
834-484: A benefit concert for him after Covent Garden refused. In 1817, bare flame gaslight had replaced the former candles and oil lamps that lighted the Covent Garden stage. This was an improvement, but in 1837 Macready employed limelight in the theatre for the first time, during a performance of a pantomime, Peeping Tom of Coventry . Limelight used a block of quicklime heated by an oxygen and hydrogen flame. This allowed
973-501: A bit but not for long (he was quite tough), the staff couldn't object if his work and games didn't suffer. He wrote lots of it, reams and reams of it. Audrey Alston encouraged Britten to go to symphony concerts in Norwich . At one of these, during the triennial Norfolk and Norwich Festival in October 1924, he heard Frank Bridge 's orchestral poem The Sea , conducted by the composer. It was
1112-693: A composition scholarship at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London; his examiners were the composers John Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams and the college's harmony and counterpoint teacher, S P Waddington. Britten was at the RCM from 1930 to 1933, studying composition with Ireland and piano with Arthur Benjamin . He won the Sullivan Prize for composition, the Cobbett Competition for chamber music, and
1251-461: A concert performance, which was the opera's first performance in any form since its inaugural production in 1953. When the production toured in 1954 to Manchester and Birmingham, Joan Sutherland sang the role of Penelope. The second staging of Gloriana was undertaken by Sadler's Wells Opera in 1966 with Sylvia Fisher in the title role, directed by Colin Graham . In 1973, at The Proms in London,
1390-633: A concert version under conductor Charles Mackerras was performed and recorded, based on Sadlers' Wells Opera's revival of the Colin Graham production, with Ava June and David Hillman as Elizabeth and Essex. Another eleven years were to pass before a recording appeared, that of 1984 under Mark Elder by the English National Opera (formerly Sadlers' Wells Opera). This was also based on a revival of Colin Graham's production, with Sarah Walker and Anthony Rolfe-Johnson as Elizabeth and Essex, and
1529-484: A costume-making facility for the Royal Opera House and a training centre for students of costume-making from South Essex College . The building also houses the Royal Opera House's collection of historically important costumes. Other elements at High House, Purfleet, include The Backstage Centre, a new technical theatre and music training centre which is currently run by the National College for Creative Industries and
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#17328516102591668-443: A damaged heart, and doctors warned his parents that he would probably never be able to lead a normal life. He recovered more fully than expected, and as a boy was a keen tennis player and cricketer. To his mother's great delight he was an outstandingly musical child, unlike his sisters, who inherited their father's indifference to music, while his brother, Robert, though musically talented, was interested only in ragtime . Edith gave
1807-538: A farmer had been thwarted by lack of capital, and he had instead trained as a dentist, a profession he practised successfully but without pleasure. While studying at Charing Cross Hospital in London he met Edith Hockey, the daughter of a civil service clerk in the British Government's Home Office . They were married in September 1901 at St John's, Smith Square , London. The consensus among biographers of Britten
1946-491: A few days later, Britten gave him what he had written of Praise We Great Men . I heard of his death ... and took a long walk in total silence through gently falling snow across a frozen lake, which corresponded exactly to the inexpressible sense of numbness at such a loss. The world is colder and lonelier without the presence of our supreme creator of music. Peter Maxwell Davies , 1977 Britten died of congestive heart failure on 4 December 1976. His funeral service
2085-516: A great interest in writing music for children and amateur performers, including the opera Noye's Fludde , a Missa Brevis , and the song collection Friday Afternoons . He often composed with particular performers in mind. His most frequent and important muse was his personal and professional partner, the tenor Peter Pears ; others included Kathleen Ferrier , Jennifer Vyvyan , Janet Baker , Dennis Brain , Julian Bream , Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau , Osian Ellis and Mstislav Rostropovich . Britten
2224-480: A loan to the Culture Recovery Fund . In 2023 members of the orchestra were selected to play at the coronation of Charles III and Camilla . In 2024, the public branding of the venue and its associated online and media presence was changed from the Royal Opera House to Royal Ballet and Opera to reflect the combined companies that call the physical building their home. The physical building itself remains
2363-477: A main public area for performances in the main auditorium, the Paul Hamlyn Hall is also used for hosting a number of events, including private functions, dances, exhibitions, concerts, and workshops. The Linbury Studio Theatre is a flexible, secondary performance space, constructed below ground level within the Royal Opera House. It has retractable raked seating and a floor which can be raised or lowered to form
2502-624: A major overhaul. In 1975 the Labour government gave land adjacent to the Royal Opera House for a long-overdue modernisation, refurbishment, and extension. In the early 1980s the first part of a major renovation included an extension to the rear of the theatre on the James Street corner. The development added two new ballet studios, offices, a Chorus Rehearsal Room and the Opera Rehearsal room. Dressing rooms were also added. By 1995, sufficient funds from
2641-645: A new studio theatre, the Linbury, as well as more public space was created. The inclusion of the adjacent old Floral Hall, which had fallen into disrepair and was used as a scenery store before redevelopment, created a new and extensive public gathering place. The venue is now claimed by the ROH to be the most modern theatre facility in Europe. Surtitles , projected onto a screen above the proscenium, have been used for all opera performances since they were introduced for school matinees in
2780-476: A poem by Edith Sitwell . He returned to Aldeburgh in August, and wrote Welcome Ode for children's choir and orchestra. In November, Britten realised that he could no longer compose. On his 63rd birthday, 22 November, at his request Rita Thomson organised a champagne party and invited his friends and his sisters Barbara and Beth, to say their goodbyes to the dying composer. When Rostropovich made his farewell visit
2919-506: A scenery-making facility for their operas and ballets at High House, Purfleet , Essex, on 6 December 2010. The building was designed by Nicholas Hare Architects. The East of England Development Agency, which partly funded developments on the park, notes that "the first phase includes the Royal Opera House's Bob and Tamar Manoukian Production Workshop and Community areas". The Bob and Tamar Manoukian Costume Centre, also designed by Nicholas Hare Associates, opened in September 2015, and provides
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#17328516102593058-437: A studio floor, a raised stage, or a stage with orchestra pit. The theatre can accommodate up to 400 patrons and host a variety of different events. It has been used for private functions, traditional theatre shows, and concerts, as well as community and educational events, product launches, dinners and exhibitions, etc., and is one of the most technologically advanced performance venues in London with its own public areas, including
3197-453: Is an old woman. She receives him kindly and is initially sympathetic to his troubles, but grows impatient as he complains about his enemies at court. When he has left, her maids dress her and make up her face. Cecil arrives and warns her that the Irish rebels and the hot-headed Essex both pose a threat to her reign. Elizabeth agrees that Essex should be kept under house arrest. Scene 2: A street in
3336-424: Is consistent with the maintenance of the best possible standards ..." The Royal Opera House reopened on 20 February 1946 with a performance of The Sleeping Beauty in an extravagant new production designed by Oliver Messel . Webster, with his music director Karl Rankl , immediately began to build a resident company. In December 1946, they shared their first production, Purcell 's The Fairy-Queen , with
3475-813: Is reluctant. Alone, she muses on her continued fondness for Essex. Lady Essex, Lady Rich and Lord Mountjoy arrive to beg for mercy for Essex. The Queen treats the gentle Lady Essex kindly and reassures her that she and her children will not suffer. However, she becomes angry when the proud Lady Rich implies that the Queen needs Essex to rule effectively. Elizabeth refuses to listen to further entreaties and signs Essex's death warrant. Alone again, she reflects on her relationship with Essex and her own mortality. Notes Sources Other sources Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten OM CH (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976)
3614-558: Is separately Grade II heritage listed. The redevelopment had gone ahead on the strength of a pledge of £10m from the philanthropist Alberto Vilar and for a number of years, it was known as the Vilar Floral Hall; however Vilar failed to make good his pledge. As a result, the name was changed in September 2005 to the Paul Hamlyn Hall, after the opera house received a donation of £10m from the estate of Paul Hamlyn , towards its education and development programmes. As well as acting as
3753-628: Is that his father was a loving but somewhat stern and remote parent. Britten, according to his sister Beth, "got on well with him and shared his wry sense of humour, dedication to work and capacity for taking pains." Edith Britten was a talented amateur musician and secretary of the Lowestoft Musical Society. In the English provinces of the early 20th century, distinctions of social class were taken very seriously. Britten described his family as "very ordinary middle class", but there were aspects of
3892-591: Is the home of The Royal Opera , The Royal Ballet , and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel , began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building
4031-401: Is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade , foyer , and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, making it the third largest in London, and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and
4170-522: The BBC Singers , who first performed it the following year. In this same period he wrote Friday Afternoons , a collection of 12 songs for the pupils of Clive House School, Prestatyn , where his brother was headmaster. In February 1935, at Bridge's instigation, Britten was invited to a job interview by the BBC's director of music Adrian Boult and his assistant Edward Clark . Britten was not enthusiastic about
4309-600: The First World War , the theatre was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works for use as a furniture repository. From 1934 to 1936, Geoffrey Toye was managing director, working alongside the artistic director Sir Thomas Beecham . Despite early successes, Toye and Beecham eventually fell out, and Toye resigned. During the Second World War the ROH became a dance hall. There was a possibility that it would remain so after
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4448-757: The Suite on English Folk Tunes "A Time There Was" (1974); the Third String Quartet (1975), which drew on material from Death in Venice ; and the dramatic cantata Phaedra (1975), written for Janet Baker . In June 1976, the last year of his life, Britten accepted a life peerage – the first composer so honoured – becoming Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk. After the 1976 Aldeburgh Festival, Britten and Pears travelled to Norway, where Britten began writing Praise We Great Men , for voices and orchestra based on
4587-636: The amphitheatre gallery. The proscenium is 14.80 metres (48 ft 7 in) wide, with the stage of the same depth and 12.20 metres (40 ft 0 in) high. The main auditorium is a Grade I listed building . The Royal Opera House was rebranded as the Royal Ballet and Opera in 2024. The foundation of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden lies in the letters patent awarded by Charles II to Sir William Davenant in 1662, allowing Davenant to operate one of only two patent theatre companies ( The Duke's Company ) in London. The letters patent remained in
4726-498: The coronation of Elizabeth II , had a cool reception at the gala premiere in the presence of the Queen and the British Establishment en masse . The downbeat story of Elizabeth I in her decline, and Britten's score – reportedly thought by members of the premiere's audience "too modern" for such a gala – did not overcome what Matthews calls the "ingrained philistinism" of the ruling classes. Although Gloriana did well at
4865-711: The pantomime clown Joseph Grimaldi ( The Garrick of Clowns ) had performed his greatest success in Harlequin and Mother Goose; or the Golden Egg at Covent Garden, and this was subsequently revived, at the new theatre. Grimaldi was an innovator: his performance as Joey introduced the clown to the world, building on the existing role of Harlequin derived from the Commedia dell'arte . His father had been ballet-master at Drury Lane, and his physical comedy, his ability to invent visual tricks and buffoonery , and his ability to poke fun at
5004-527: The 'spectacular', including live horses on the stage and very loud music. Critics considered it a complete failure and Jullien was ruined and fled to America. Costa and his successors presented all operas in Italian, even those originally written in French, German or English, until 1892, when Gustav Mahler presented the debut of Wagner's Ring cycle at Covent Garden. The word "Italian" was then quietly dropped from
5143-530: The 1950s. Hemmings later said, "In all of the time that I spent with him he never abused that trust", and Crawford wrote "I cannot say enough about the kindness of that great man ... he had a wonderful patience and affinity with young people. He loved music, and loved youngsters caring about music." It was long suspected by several of Britten's close associates that there was something exceptional about his attraction to teenage boys: Auden referred to Britten's "attraction to thin-as-a-board juveniles ... to
5282-517: The 1960s, the Aldeburgh Festival was outgrowing its customary venues, and plans to build a new concert hall in Aldeburgh were not progressing. When redundant Victorian maltings buildings in the village of Snape, six miles inland, became available for hire, Britten realised that the largest of them could be converted into a concert hall and opera house. The 830-seat Snape Maltings hall was opened by
5421-407: The 1971 Portrait of Sir David Webster by David Hockney , which had hung in the opera house for several decades, was put up for auction at Christie's . It eventually sold for £12.8 million. The funds raised from the sale were needed to ensure the survival of the institution. "Significant redundancies " and an appeal for public donations were also made. In addition, the opera house applied for
5560-457: The 1983/4 season. Since the reopening of the theatre in 1999 an electronic libretto system provides translations onto small video screens for some seats, and additional monitors and screens are to be introduced to other parts of the house. In 2014 design work, known as the Open Up Project, began with the aim of opening the theatre's building to the public during the day, as well as improving
5699-601: The 90s redevelopment of the Royal Opera House. It is named in recognition of donations made by the Linbury Trust towards the redevelopment. The Trust is operated by Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover and his wife Anya Linden , a former dancer with the Royal Ballet. The name Linbury is derived from the names Linden and Sainsbury. It was opened in 1999 with a collaboration from three Croydon secondary schools (including Coloma Convent Girls' School and Edenham High School ) in an original performance called About Face . In 2008
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5838-483: The Aldeburgh Festival. One of the best known of Britten's works, the War Requiem , was premiered in 1962. He had been asked four years earlier to write a work for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral , a modernist building designed by Basil Spence . The old cathedral had been left in ruins by an air-raid on the city in 1940 in which hundreds of people died. Britten decided that his work would commemorate
5977-470: The Arts Lottery through Arts Council England and private fundraising had been raised to enable the company to embark upon a major £213 million reconstruction of the building by Carillion , which took place between 1997 and 1999, under the chairmanship of Sir Angus Stirling . This involved the demolition of almost the whole site including several adjacent buildings to make room for a major increase in
6116-510: The Brittens that were not ordinary: Edith's father was illegitimate, and her mother was an alcoholic; Robert Britten was an agnostic and refused to attend church on Sundays. Music was the principal means by which Edith Britten strove to maintain the family's social standing, inviting the pillars of the local community to musical soirées at the house. When Britten was three months old he contracted pneumonia and nearly died. The illness left him with
6255-526: The City of London A ballad singer recounts Essex's attempts to incite rebellion, while Essex's followers try to gather new recruits. A herald announces that Essex is branded a traitor, and that anyone who supports him will be guilty of treason. Scene 3: The Palace of Whitehall Essex has been sent to the Tower of London . Cecil, Raleigh and other councillors try to persuade the Queen to sentence Essex to death, but she
6394-524: The Kid and An Outdoor Overture , both of which influenced his own music. In 1940 Britten composed Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo , the first of many song cycles for Pears. Britten's orchestral works from this period include the Violin Concerto , Sinfonia da Requiem , and An American Overture . In 1941 Britten produced his first music drama, Paul Bunyan , an operetta , to a libretto by Auden. While in
6533-501: The Orchestra (1945), written for an educational film, Instruments of the Orchestra , directed by Muir Mathieson and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent . It became, and remained, his most often played and popular work. Britten's next opera, The Rape of Lucretia , was presented at the first post-war Glyndebourne Festival in 1946. It was then taken on tour to provincial cities under
6672-481: The Queen at the start of the twentieth Aldeburgh Festival on 2 June 1967; it was immediately hailed as one of the best concert halls in the country. The hall was destroyed by fire in 1969, but Britten was determined that it would be rebuilt in time for the following year's festival, which it was. The Queen again attended the opening performance in 1970. The Maltings gave the festival a venue that could comfortably house large orchestral works and operas. Britten conducted
6811-662: The Royal Opera House and Manchester City Council began planning stages a new development known as Royal Opera House, Manchester . The proposal would have seen the Palace Theatre in Manchester refurbished, to create a theatre capable of staging productions by both the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera. It was intended that the Royal Opera House would take residence of the theatre for an annual 18-week season, staging 16 performances by
6950-409: The Royal Opera House whilst the branding and business operations change their title to reflect this adjustment. The Paul Hamlyn Hall is a large iron and glass structure adjacent to, and with direct access to, the main opera house building. The hall now acts as the atrium and main public area of the opera house, with a champagne bar, restaurant and other hospitality services, and also providing access to
7089-474: The Royal Opera, 28 performances by the Royal Ballet and other small-scale productions. A year later The Lowry sent an open letter to the then Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport , Ben Bradshaw , Arts Council England, Manchester City Council and the ROH, calling for the scheme, in its current form, to be scrapped. In 2010 it was announced that the project was being shelved as part of larger arts-funding cuts. The Royal Opera House opened
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#17328516102597228-655: The Second World War began, Britten and Pears turned for advice to the British embassy in Washington and were told that they should remain in the US as artistic ambassadors. Pears was inclined to disregard the advice and go back to England; Britten also felt the urge to return, but accepted the embassy's counsel and persuaded Pears to do the same. Already a friend of the composer Aaron Copland , Britten encountered his latest works Billy
7367-457: The Stone (1939). In 1937 there were two events of huge importance in Britten's life: his mother died, and he met the tenor Peter Pears . Although Britten was extraordinarily devoted to his mother and was devastated at her death, it also seems to have been something of a liberation for him. Only after that did he begin to engage in emotional relationships with people his own age or younger. Later in
7506-577: The String Quartet in F, completed in April 1928, and the Quatre Chansons Françaises , a song-cycle for high voice and orchestra. Authorities differ on the extent of Bridge's influence on his pupil's technique. Humphrey Carpenter and Michael Oliver judge that Britten's abilities as an orchestrator were essentially self-taught; Donald Mitchell considers that Bridge had an important influence on
7645-490: The Theatre Royal (designed by Edward Shepherd ) at the site of an ancient convent garden. Inigo Jones had developed part of this property in the 1630s with a piazza and St Paul's church (now known colloquially as the actors' church). In addition, a Royal Charter had created a fruit and vegetable market in the area, a market which survived in that location until 1974 . At the opening of the theatre on 7 December 1732, Rich
7784-511: The US, Britten had his first encounter with Balinese gamelan music, through transcriptions for piano duo made by the Canadian composer Colin McPhee . The two met in the summer of 1939 and subsequently performed a number of McPhee's transcriptions for a recording. This musical encounter bore fruit in several Balinese-inspired works later in Britten's career. Moving to the US did not relieve Britten of
7923-419: The US, Koussevitzky, always generous in encouraging new talent, offered him a $ 1,000 commission to write the opera. Britten and Pears returned to England in April 1942. During the long transatlantic sea crossing Britten completed the choral works A Ceremony of Carols and Hymn to St Cecilia . The latter was his last large-scale collaboration with Auden. Britten had grown away from him, and Auden became one of
8062-425: The audience were extraordinary. Early pantomimes were performed as mimes accompanied by music, but as Music hall became popular, Grimaldi introduced the pantomime dame to the theatre and was responsible for the tradition of audience singing. By 1821 dance and clowning had taken such a physical toll on Grimaldi that he could barely walk, and he retired from the theatre. By 1828, he was penniless; Drury Lane held
8201-539: The ballet company. On 14 January 1947, the Covent Garden Opera Company gave its first performance of Bizet 's Carmen . Before the grand opening, the Royal Opera House presented one of the Robert Mayer Children's concerts on Saturday, 9 February 1946. Several renovations had taken place to parts of the house in the 1960s, including improvements to the amphitheatre but the theatre clearly needed
8340-510: The banner of the "Glyndebourne English Opera Company", an uneasy alliance of Britten and his associates with John Christie , the autocratic proprietor of Glyndebourne. The tour lost money heavily, and Christie announced that he would underwrite no more tours. Britten and his associates set up the English Opera Group; the librettist Eric Crozier and the designer John Piper joined Britten as artistic directors. The group's express purpose
8479-537: The box office, there were no further productions in Britain for another 13 years. It was later recognised as one of Britten's finer operas. The Turn of the Screw the following year was an unqualified success; together with Peter Grimes it became, and at 2013 remained, one of the two most frequently performed of Britten's operas. In the 1950s the "fervently anti-homosexual" Home Secretary , Sir David Maxwell Fyfe , urged
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#17328516102598618-511: The cane or the slipper were happily rare (although one nocturnal expedition to stalk ghosts left its marks behind); he worked his way up the school slowly and steadily, until at the age of thirteen he reached that pinnacle of importance and grandeur, never to be quite equalled in later days: the head of the Sixth, head-prefect, and Victor Ludorum . But – there was one curious thing about this boy: he wrote music. His friends bore with it, his enemies kicked
8757-447: The centenary of Britten's birth. The performance starred Susan Bullock , Toby Spence , Patricia Bardon and Mark Stone . Scene 1: A tournament Lord Mountjoy wins a jousting tournament. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, provokes Mountjoy into fighting with him and is slightly wounded. Queen Elizabeth arrives and scolds the men for their jealousy. She requests that they attend her at court as friends. Mountjoy and Essex make peace and
8896-475: The child performer Master Betty ; the great clown Joseph Grimaldi made his name at Covent Garden. Many famous actors of the day appeared at the theatre, including the tragediennes Sarah Siddons and Eliza O'Neill , the Shakespearean actors William Macready , Edmund Kean and his son Charles . On 25 March 1833 Edmund Kean collapsed on stage while playing Othello , and died two months later. In 1806,
9035-478: The composer sustained many deep friendships to the end of his life. Throughout his adult life, Britten had a particular rapport with children and enjoyed close friendships with several boys, particularly those in their early teens. The first such friendship was with Piers Dunkerley, who was 13 years old in 1934, when Britten was aged 20. Other boys Britten befriended were the young David Hemmings and Michael Crawford , both of whom sang treble roles in his works in
9174-401: The composer's so-called "corpses" – former intimates from whom he completely cut off contact once they had outlived their usefulness to him or offended him in some way. Having arrived in Britain, Britten and Pears applied for recognition as conscientious objectors ; Britten was initially allowed only non-combatant service in the military, but on appeal he gained unconditional exemption. After
9313-558: The creation of Snape Maltings concert hall in 1967. In 1976, he was the first composer to be given a life peerage . He died shortly afterwards, aged 63. Britten was born in the fishing port of Lowestoft in Suffolk , on the east coast of England on 22 November 1913, the feast day of Saint Cecilia , the patron saint of music. He was the youngest of four children of Robert Victor Britten (1877–1934) and his wife Edith Rhoda, née Hockey (1874–1937). Robert Britten's youthful ambition to become
9452-468: The crowd praise Elizabeth. Scene 2: The Queen's apartment, Nonsuch Palace Elizabeth and Cecil discuss the rivalry between Mountjoy and Essex. Cecil warns Elizabeth about the threat of another Armada from Spain and cautions her that it would be dangerous to show too much affection to the impulsive Essex. After Cecil has gone, Essex himself enters and sings to the Queen to take her mind off political problems. He asks her to let him go to Ireland to counter
9591-498: The cycle. In September 1928 Britten went as a boarder to Gresham's School , in Holt, Norfolk . At the time he felt unhappy there, even writing in his diary of contemplating suicide or running away: he hated being separated from his family, most particularly from his mother; he despised the music master; and he was shocked at the prevalence of bullying, though he was not the target of it. He remained there for two years and in 1930 he won
9730-465: The dead of both World Wars in a large-scale score for soloists, chorus, chamber ensemble and orchestra. His text interspersed the traditional Requiem Mass with poems by Wilfred Owen . Matthews writes, "With the War Requiem Britten reached the apex of his reputation: it was almost universally hailed as a masterpiece." Shostakovich told Rostropovich that he believed it to be "the greatest work of
9869-531: The death of his mother in 1937 he had used money she bequeathed him to buy the Old Mill in Snape , Suffolk which became his country home. He spent much of his time there in 1944 working on the opera Peter Grimes . Pears joined Sadler's Wells Opera Company , whose artistic director, the singer Joan Cross , announced her intention to re-open the company's home base in London with Britten's opera, casting herself and Pears in
10008-609: The documentary films Coal Face and Night Mail in 1935. They also collaborated on the song cycle Our Hunting Fathers (1936), radical both in politics and musical treatment, and subsequently other works including Cabaret Songs , On This Island , Paul Bunyan and Hymn to St Cecilia . Auden was a considerable influence on Britten, encouraging him to widen his aesthetic, intellectual and political horizons, and also to come to terms with his homosexuality. Auden was, as David Matthews puts it, "cheerfully and guiltlessly promiscuous"; Britten, puritanical and conventional by nature,
10147-529: The end of his life, when he told Pears that it had coloured everything he had written since. Colin Matthews comments that the next two works Britten composed after his return, the song-cycle The Holy Sonnets of John Donne and the Second String Quartet, contrast strongly with earlier, lighter-hearted works such as Les Illuminations . Britten recovered his joie de vivre for The Young Person's Guide to
10286-563: The entrances, lobby areas and the Linbury Theatre. As part of the Open Up Project, IQ Projects were tasked with the renovation of the upper floor bar area and restaurant utilising various elements of bespoke glazing. In October 2020, the BBC reported that the Royal Opera House had lost 60% of its income as a result of restrictions implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic . As a consequence,
10425-470: The existing shell of the building. Rebuilding began in December 1808, and the second Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (designed by Robert Smirke ) opened on 18 September 1809 with a performance of Macbeth followed by a musical entertainment called The Quaker . The actor-manager John Philip Kemble , raised seat prices to help recoup the cost of rebuilding and the cost of an increased ground rent introduced by
10564-507: The first performance outside Russia of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony at Snape in 1970. Shostakovich, a friend since 1960, dedicated the symphony to Britten; he was himself the dedicatee of The Prodigal Son . Two other Russian musicians who were close to Britten and regularly performed at the festival were the pianist Sviatoslav Richter and the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich . Britten composed his cello suites , Cello Symphony and Cello Sonata for Rostropovich, who premiered them at
10703-499: The first substantial piece of modern music he had ever encountered, and he was, in his own phrase, "knocked sideways" by it. Audrey Alston was a friend of Bridge; when he returned to Norwich for the next festival in 1927 she brought her not quite 14-year-old pupil to meet him. Bridge was impressed with the boy, and after they had gone through some of Britten's compositions together he invited him to come to London to take lessons from him. Robert Britten, supported by Thomas Sewell, doubted
10842-475: The garden. Essex and his wife Frances join them, and Essex denounces the Queen for thwarting his plans to go to Ireland. He, Mountjoy and Lady Rich imagine gaining power as the Queen gets older, but Frances urges caution. Scene 3: The Palace of Whitehall A ball is in progress at the Palace. Frances, Lady Essex, is wearing a beautifully ornate dress, which is much admired by members of the court. The Queen commands
10981-464: The humiliated Lady Essex. Essex expresses his fury at the Queen's behaviour, but calms down when Elizabeth returns, in her own clothes. She appoints Essex Lord Deputy of Ireland. Everyone celebrates. Scene 1: Nonsuch Palace The Queen's maids gossip about Essex's failure to control the Irish rebellion. Essex bursts in and insists on seeing the Queen immediately, even though she is wigless and in her dressing gown. Elizabeth sadly admits to Essex that she
11120-491: The in-fighting among the company, Cross, Britten and Pears severed their ties with Sadler's Wells in December 1945, going on to found what was to become the English Opera Group . A month after the opening of Peter Grimes , Britten and Yehudi Menuhin went to Germany to give recitals to concentration camp survivors. What they saw, at Belsen most of all, so shocked Britten that he refused to talk about it until towards
11259-468: The landowner, the Duke of Bedford, but the move was so unpopular that audiences disrupted performances by beating sticks, hissing, booing and dancing. The Old Price Riots lasted over two months, and the management was finally forced to accede to the audience's demands. During this time, entertainments were varied; opera and ballet were presented, but not exclusively. Kemble engaged a variety of acts, including
11398-537: The leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-scale operas for Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden , he wrote chamber operas for small forces, suitable for performance in venues of modest size. Among the best known of these is The Turn of the Screw (1954). Recurring themes in his operas include the struggle of an outsider against a hostile society and the corruption of innocence. Britten's other works range from orchestral to choral, solo vocal, chamber and instrumental as well as film music. He took
11537-598: The leading roles. There were complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the "cacophony" of Britten's score, as well as some ill-suppressed homophobic remarks. Peter Grimes opened in June 1945 and was hailed by public and critics; its box-office takings matched or exceeded those for La bohème and Madame Butterfly , which were staged during the same season. The opera administrator Lord Harewood called it "the first genuinely successful British opera, Gilbert and Sullivan apart, since Purcell ." Dismayed by
11676-551: The main auditorium at all levels. The building was formerly known as Floral Hall . It was originally built by the Opera House to house a flower market (also selling fruits and vegetables), hence the name. It was designed by Edward Middleton Barry and opened in 1860. After being used as a concert hall, it became part of the Covent Garden Market in 1887. A fire broke out in the building in 1956, after which it sat derelict. It
11815-430: The musicians to play an energetic melody; the courtiers dance a set of five energetic "Courtly Dances". The ladies retire to change their linen. Lady Essex enters, wearing a plainer dress than before and tells Lady Rich that her original dress has gone missing. The Queen arrives wearing Lady Essex's dress, which is far too short and tight for her. She mocks Lady Essex and withdraws again. Mountjoy, Essex and Lady Rich comfort
11954-485: The name of the opera house. The conjuror John Henry Anderson , who had exposed the Davenport brothers , leased the theatre to stage his shows which were critical of mediums and spiritualism . After a gala performance and bal masqué organised by Anderson, the theatre caught fire in the early hours of 5 March 1856 and was destroyed. Work on a third theatre, designed by Edward Middleton Barry , started in 1857, and
12093-428: The new building, which still remains as the nucleus of the present theatre, was built by Lucas Brothers and opened on 15 May 1858 with a performance of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots . The Royal English Opera company under the management of Louisa Pyne and William Harrison , made their last performance at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane , on 11 December 1858 and took up residence at Covent Garden on 20 December 1858 with
12232-465: The nuisance of hostile criticism: although Olin Downes , the doyen of New York music critics, and Irving Kolodin took to Britten's music, Virgil Thomson was, as the music scholar Suzanne Robinson puts it, consistently "severe and spiteful". Thomson described Les Illuminations (1940) as "little more than a series of bromidic and facile 'effects' ... pretentious, banal and utterly disappointing", and
12371-454: The police to enforce the Victorian laws making homosexual acts illegal. Britten and Pears came under scrutiny; Britten was visited by police officers in 1953 and was so perturbed that he discussed with his assistant Imogen Holst the possibility that Pears might have to enter a sham marriage (with whom is unclear). In the end nothing was done. An increasingly important influence on Britten
12510-446: The popular name given to Elizabeth I. The opera depicts the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex , and was composed for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. Several in the audience of its gala opening were disappointed by the opera, which presents the first Elizabeth as a sympathetic, but flawed, character motivated largely by vanity and desire. The premiere
12649-469: The possession of the patentees' heirs until the 19th century. Their whereabouts were unknown for some time, but as of 2019 they are held in the Rosenbach Museum & Library , Philadelphia . In 1728, John Rich , actor-manager of the Duke's Company at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre , commissioned The Beggar's Opera from John Gay . The success of this venture provided him with the capital to build
12788-414: The premiere of Michael Balfe 's Satanella – the first opera to have its world premiere at the new theatre – and continued there until 1865. The theatre became the Royal Opera House (ROH) in 1892, and the number of French and German works offered increased. Winter and summer seasons of opera and ballet were given, and the building was also used for pantomime, recitals and political meetings. During
12927-473: The premieres of his operas A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Jubilee Hall in 1960 and Death in Venice at Snape Maltings Concert Hall in 1973. Unlike many leading English composers, Britten was not known as a teacher, but in 1949 he accepted his only private pupil, Arthur Oldham , who studied with him for three years. Oldham made himself useful, acting as musical assistant and arranging Variations on
13066-614: The principal character. After the completion of the opera Britten went into the National Heart Hospital and was operated on in May 1973 to replace a failing heart valve. The replacement was successful, but he suffered a slight stroke, affecting his right hand. This brought his career as a performer to an end. While in hospital Britten became friendly with a senior nursing sister, Rita Thomson; she moved to Aldeburgh in 1974 and looked after him until his death. Britten's last works include
13205-523: The production also toured to the United States in New York, New Orleans and Texas. Other productions of the opera in Britain have been undertaken by Welsh National Opera in 1992 and by Opera North in 1994. At Opera North the production was directed by Phyllida Lloyd with Josephine Barstow and Tom Randle as Elizabeth and Essex, conducted by Paul Daniel , the production was extensively toured, revived and
13344-454: The prospect of working full-time in the BBC music department and was relieved when what came out of the interview was an invitation to write the score for a documentary film, The King's Stamp , directed by Alberto Cavalcanti for the GPO Film Unit . Britten became a member of the film unit's small group of regular contributors, another of whom was W. H. Auden . Together they worked on
13483-447: The ranks of his 'corpses' and I have always recognized that any ordinary person must soon outlive his usefulness to such a great creative artist as Ben." Dame Janet Baker said in 1981, "I think he was quite entitled to take what he wanted from others ... He did not want to hurt anyone, but the task in hand was more important than anything or anybody." Matthews feels that this aspect of Britten has been exaggerated, and he observes that
13622-558: The rebellion led by the Earl of Tyrone . He grows impatient when the Queen shows reluctance, and accuses Cecil and Walter Raleigh of plotting against him. Elizabeth sends him away and prays for strength to rule her people well. Scene 1: Norwich The Queen, accompanied by Essex, visits Norwich, and talks with the Recorder of Norwich. A masque celebrating Time and Concord is given in her honour. Scene 2: Essex's house Essex's sister Lady Penelope Rich meets Mountjoy for an illicit tryst in
13761-464: The regime at the school. He himself rarely fell foul of Sewell, a mathematician, in which subject Britten was a star pupil. The school had no musical tradition, and Britten continued to study the piano with Ethel Astle. From the age of ten he took viola lessons from a friend of his mother, Audrey Alston, who had been a professional player before her marriage. In his spare time he composed prolifically. When his Simple Symphony , based on these juvenilia,
13900-466: The relationships affectionate – including bed-sharing, kissing and nude bathing – but strictly platonic. Royal Opera House The Royal Ballet and Opera , formerly the Royal Opera House ( ROH ), is a historic opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden , central London . The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden , after a previous use of the site. It
14039-480: The rest of his life. The Aldeburgh Festival was launched in June 1948, with Britten, Pears, and Crozier directing. Albert Herring played at the Jubilee Hall, and Britten's new cantata for tenor, chorus, and orchestra, Saint Nicolas , was presented in the parish church. The festival was an immediate success and became an annual event that has continued into the 21st century. New works by Britten featured in almost every festival until his death in 1976, including
14178-517: The score of the new opera until August 1970. Owen Wingrave was first broadcast in Britain in May 1971, when it was also televised in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the US and Yugoslavia. In September 1970 Britten asked Myfanwy Piper , who had adapted the two Henry James stories for him, to turn another prose story into a libretto. This
14317-716: The sexless and innocent", and Pears once wrote to Britten: "remember there are lovely things in the world still – children, boys, sunshine, the sea, Mozart, you and me." In public, the matter was little discussed during Britten's lifetime and much discussed after it. Carpenter 's 1992 biography closely examined the evidence, as do later studies of Britten, most particularly John Bridcut 's Britten's Children (2006), which concentrates on Britten's friendships and relationships with various children and adolescents. Some commentators have continued to question Britten's conduct, sometimes very sharply. Carpenter and Bridcut conclude that he held any sexual impulses under firm control and kept
14456-514: The size of the complex. The auditorium itself remained, but well over half of the complex is new. The design team was led by Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones of Dixon Jones BDP as architects. The acoustic designers were Rob Harris and Jeremy Newton of Arup Acoustics. The building engineer was Arup with Stanhope as developer. The new building has the same traditional horseshoe-shaped auditorium as before, but with greatly improved technical, rehearsal, office, and educational facilities. Additionally,
14595-418: The son of a dentist. He showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge . Britten first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of
14734-441: The success that Frank Bridge had enjoyed in the US; the departure of Auden and his friend Christopher Isherwood to the US from England three months previously; hostile or belittling reviews of Britten's music in the English press; and under-rehearsed and inadequate performances. Britten and Pears consummated their relationship and from then until Britten's death they were partners in both their professional and personal lives. When
14873-541: The term was invented by Lord Harewood. Both Mackerras and Harewood joined the list of corpses, the former for joking that the number of boys in Noye's Fludde must have been a delight to the composer, and the latter for an extramarital affair and subsequent divorce from Lady Harewood , which shocked the puritanical Britten. Among other corpses were his librettists Montagu Slater and Eric Crozier . The latter said in 1949, "He has sometimes told me, jokingly, that one day I would join
15012-404: The theatre; many of his operas and oratorios were written for that venue or had their first London performances there. He bequeathed his organ to John Rich, and it was placed in a prominent position on the stage. It was among many valuable items lost in a fire that destroyed the theatre on 20 September 1808. In 1792 the architect Henry Holland rebuilt the auditorium; he expanded its capacity within
15151-447: The twentieth century". In 1967 the BBC commissioned Britten to write an opera specially for television. Owen Wingrave was based, like The Turn of the Screw , on a ghost story by Henry James . By the 1960s Britten found composition much slower than in his prolific youth; he told the 28-year-old composer Nicholas Maw , "Get as much done now as you can, because it gets much, much more difficult as you grow older." He did not complete
15290-476: The two companies, competition was intense, and the companies often presented the same plays at the same time. Rich introduced pantomime to the repertoire, performing himself, under the stage name John Lun , as Harlequin . A tradition of seasonal pantomime continued at the modern theatre until 1939. In 1734, the theatre presented its first ballet, Pygmalion . Marie Sallé discarded tradition and her corset and danced in diaphanous robes. George Frideric Handel
15429-470: The use of spotlights to highlight performers on the stage. The Theatres Act 1843 broke the patent theatres' monopoly of drama. At that time Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket was the main centre of ballet and opera but after a dispute with the management in 1846 Michael Costa , conductor at Her Majesty's, transferred his allegiance to Covent Garden, bringing most of the company with him. The auditorium
15568-448: The war but, following lengthy negotiations, the music publishers Boosey & Hawkes acquired the lease of the building. David Webster was appointed General Administrator, and Sadler's Wells Ballet was invited to become the resident ballet company. The Covent Garden Opera Trust was created and laid out plans "to establish Covent Garden as the national centre of opera and ballet, employing British artists in all departments, wherever that
15707-536: The wisdom of pursuing a composing career; a compromise was agreed by which Britten would, as planned, go on to his public school the following year but would make regular day-trips to London to study composition with Bridge and piano with his colleague Harold Samuel . Bridge impressed on Britten the importance of scrupulous attention to the technical craft of composing and the maxim that "you should find yourself and be true to what you found." The earliest substantial works Britten composed while studying with Bridge are
15846-468: The work was much enhanced when Koussevitzky took it up shortly afterwards. In 1942 Britten read the work of the poet George Crabbe for the first time. The Borough , set on the Suffolk coast close to Britten's homeland, awakened in him such longings for England that he knew he must return. He also knew that he must write an opera based on Crabbe's poem about the fisherman Peter Grimes. Before Britten left
15985-438: The year he got to know Pears while they were both helping to clear out the country cottage of a mutual friend who had died in an air crash. Pears quickly became Britten's musical inspiration and close (though for the moment platonic) friend. Britten's first work for him was composed within weeks of their meeting, a setting of Emily Brontë 's poem, "A thousand gleaming fires", for tenor and strings. During 1937 Britten composed
16124-630: The years by Britten before his final heart complaint developed. Emotionally, according to some commentators, Britten never completely grew up, retaining in his outlook something of a child's view of the world. He was not always confident that he was the genius others declared him to be, and though he was hypercritical of his own works, he was acutely, even aggressively sensitive to criticism from anybody else. Britten was, as he himself acknowledged, notorious for dumping friends and colleagues who either offended him or ceased to be of use to him – his "corpses". The conductor Sir Charles Mackerras believed that
16263-408: The young Britten his first lessons in piano and notation. He made his first attempts at composition when he was five. He started piano lessons when he was seven years old, and three years later began to play the viola . He was one of the last composers brought up on exclusively live music: his father refused to have a gramophone or, later, a radio in the house. When he was seven Britten was sent to
16402-728: Was Thomas Mann 's novella Death in Venice , a subject he had been considering for some time. At an early stage in composition Britten was told by his doctors that a heart operation was essential if he was to live for more than two years. He was determined to finish the opera and worked urgently to complete it before going into hospital for surgery. His long-term colleague Colin Graham wrote: Perhaps of all his works, this one went deepest into Britten's own soul: there are extraordinary cross-currents of affinity between himself, his own state of health and mind, Thomas Mann, Aschenbach (Mann's dying protagonist), and Peter Pears, who must have had to tear himself in three in order to reconstitute himself as
16541-411: Was a celebrated pianist and conductor, performing many of his own works in concert and on record. He also performed and recorded works by others, such as Bach 's Brandenburg Concertos , Mozart symphonies, and song cycles by Schubert and Schumann . Together with Pears and the librettist and producer Eric Crozier , Britten founded the annual Aldeburgh Festival in 1948, and he was responsible for
16680-516: Was a success in North America, with performances in Toronto, New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, under conductors including John Barbirolli and Serge Koussevitzky . In April 1939 Britten and Pears sailed to North America, going first to Canada and then to New York. They had several reasons for leaving England, including the difficult position of pacifists in an increasingly bellicose Europe;
16819-522: Was acquired by the Opera House in 1977 and used as storage space. The redevelopment of the Floral Hall as part of the 1990s redevelopment project involved lifting up the cast iron structure to accommodate new public areas for the opera house underneath. The southern side of the hall now connected with another building, so the cast iron south portico was dismantled and rebuilt in Borough Market , where it
16958-463: Was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera Peter Grimes (1945), the War Requiem (1962) and the orchestral showpiece The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1945). Britten was born in Lowestoft , Suffolk ,
17097-409: Was attended by Queen Elizabeth II , Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh , Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and the rest of the royal family , as well as other foreign guests in London for the coronation such as Queen Sālote Tupou III of Tonga , Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Märtha of Norway and Jawaharlal Nehru . On 22 November 1963, the composer's 50th birthday, Bryan Fairfax conducted
17236-539: Was carried by his actors in procession into the building for its inaugural production of William Congreve 's The Way of the World . During its first century, the theatre was operated primarily as a playhouse, with the Letters Patent granted by Charles II giving the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden and Theatre Royal, Drury Lane exclusive rights to present spoken drama in London. Despite the frequent interchangeability between
17375-553: Was completely remodeled after an 1856 fire, during the following 1856–57 seasons, the company performed at the Lyceum Theatre . The theatre reopened as the Royal Italian Opera on 6 April 1857 with a performance of Rossini 's Semiramide . In 1852, Louis Antoine Jullien the French eccentric composer of light music and conductor presented an opera of his own composition, Pietro il Grande . Five performances were given of
17514-611: Was equally unflattering about Pears's voice. Robinson surmises that Thomson was motivated by "a mixture of spite, national pride, and professional jealousy." Paul Bunyan met with wholesale critical disapproval, and the Sinfonia da Requiem (already rejected by its Japanese sponsors because of its overtly Christian nature) received a mixed reception when Barbirolli and the New York Philharmonic premiered it in March 1941. The reputation of
17653-511: Was eventually dissuaded by his parents, on the advice of the RCM staff. The first of Britten's compositions to attract wide attention were composed while at the RCM: the Sinfonietta , Op. 1 (1932), the oboe quartet Phantasy , Op. 2, dedicated to Léon Goossens who played the first performance in a BBC broadcast on 6 August 1933, and a set of choral variations A Boy was Born , written in 1933 for
17792-562: Was headed by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother . Despite his large number of works on Christian themes, Britten has sometimes been thought of as an agnostic. Pears said that when they met in 1937 he was not sure whether or not Britten would have described himself as a Christian. In the 1960s Britten called himself a dedicated Christian, though sympathetic to the radical views propounded by the Bishop of Woolwich in Honest to God . Politically, Britten
17931-449: Was held at Aldeburgh Parish Church three days later, and he was buried in its churchyard, with a gravestone carved by Reynolds Stone . The authorities at Westminster Abbey had offered burial there, but Britten had made it clear that he wished his grave to be side by side with that, in due course, of Pears. A memorial service was held at the Abbey on 10 March 1977, at which the congregation
18070-488: Was named musical director of the company at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1719, but his first season of opera for the theatre was not presented until 1734. His first opera was Il pastor fido , followed by Ariodante (1735), and the première of Alcina , and Atalanta the following year. In 1743 there was a royal performance of Messiah ; its success resulted in a tradition of Lenten oratorio performances. From 1735 until his death in 1759, Handel gave regular seasons at
18209-514: Was not, and learned little from him. He continued to study privately with Bridge, although he later praised Ireland for "nurs[ing] me very gently through a very, very difficult musical adolescence." Britten also used his time in London to attend concerts and become better acquainted with the music of Stravinsky , Shostakovich and, most particularly, Mahler . He intended postgraduate study in Vienna with Alban Berg , Arnold Schoenberg 's student, but
18348-488: Was on the left. He told Pears that he always voted either Liberal or Labour and could not imagine ever voting Conservative , but he was never a member of any party, except the Peace Pledge Union. Physically, Britten was never robust. He walked and swam regularly and kept himself as fit as he could, but in his 1992 biography, Carpenter mentions 20 illnesses, a few of them minor but most fairly serious, suffered over
18487-500: Was one of Britten's few critical failures, and the opera was not included in the series of complete Decca recordings conducted by the composer. However, a symphonic suite extracted from the opera by the composer (Opus 53a), which includes the Courtly Dances, is often performed as a concert piece. The opera premiered on 8 June 1953 at the Royal Opera House , Covent Garden, six days after the coronation of Elizabeth II . The performance
18626-494: Was recorded in 1956, Britten wrote this pen-portrait of his young self for the sleeve note: Once upon a time there was a prep-school boy. ... He was quite an ordinary little boy ... he loved cricket, only quite liked football (although he kicked a pretty "corner"); he adored mathematics, got on all right with history, was scared by Latin Unseen; he behaved fairly well, only ragged the recognised amount, so that his contacts with
18765-565: Was recorded in 1999. Central City Opera (in Colorado) presented the North American premiere production of the opera in 2001, starring Joyce Castle as Elizabeth I. The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis mounted the work in 2005, with Christine Brewer as Elizabeth I. The Royal Opera House in London presented a performance in June–July 2013 to celebrate both the 60th anniversary of the opera, and
18904-497: Was sexually repressed. In the three years from 1935 to 1937 Britten wrote nearly 40 scores for the theatre, cinema and radio. Among the film music of the late 1930s Matthews singles out Night Mail and Love from a Stranger (1937); from the theatre music he selects for mention The Ascent of F6 (1936), On the Frontier (1938), and Johnson Over Jordan (1939); and of the music for radio, King Arthur (1937) and The Sword in
19043-706: Was the music of the East, an interest that was fostered by a tour there with Pears in 1956, when Britten once again encountered the music of the Balinese gamelan and saw for the first time Japanese Noh plays, which he called "some of the most wonderful drama I have ever seen." These eastern influences were seen and heard in the ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1957) and later in two of the three semi-operatic "Parables for Church Performance": Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968). By
19182-419: Was to produce and commission new English operas and other works, presenting them throughout the country. Britten wrote the comic opera Albert Herring for the group in 1947; while on tour in the new work Pears came up with the idea of mounting a festival in the small Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh , where Britten had moved from Snape earlier in the year, and which became his principal place of residence for
19321-491: Was twice winner of the Ernest Farrar Prize for composition. Despite these honours, he was not greatly impressed by the establishment: he found his fellow-students "amateurish and folksy" and the staff "inclined to suspect technical brilliance of being superficial and insincere." Another Ireland pupil, the composer Humphrey Searle , said that Ireland could be "an inspiring teacher to those on his own wavelength"; Britten
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