![]() While staying with friends in Southern California, they came across a back number of that wonderful, but now alas defunct, intellectual weekly The Listener, containing the script of a radio talk by Forster. ![]() In 1941 Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, were both committed pacifists and conscientious objectors, far from England at war and living in America. Yet there is a strong case to be made that the "onlie begetter" is EM Forster. In the nearly 60 years since then, Grimes - the story of a tortured fisherman hunted to death by a hostile community - has become the only internationally recognised operatic masterpiece of the post-war period, the most performed, in the most countries, and, justly, the most lauded. We know that Benjamin Britten composed Peter Grimes, with a libretto by Montagu Slater, based on George Crabbe's poem The Borough and that its first performances in June 1945 at Sadler's Wells theatre in London established Britten as the first major English operatic composer since Purcell and, if we accept him as a Briton, Handel. The conception, gestation and birth of an opera do not necessarily follow a human time span nor is the paternity as unambiguous as it is among animals.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |