Benjamin Britten: The Outsider and Lost InnocenceElden Dale Golden, kygolden@yahoo.com

Seeks to “identify the creative links between [Britten’s] music and biographical or psychological factors, in order to uncover the personal narrative encoded within the operatic narrative, and to demonstrate that, for Britten, opera was the natural medium through which to explore and express his private concerns” (1).

Seymour, Claire. The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2004. Print.

Two Themes in Britten’s Life and in His Operas:

* The Outsider who, voluntarily or involuntarily, stands on the fringes of society.

* The Person who experiences or represents a loss of innocence.

Benjamin Britten, the youngest of four children, and at the piano as a young boy

Benjamin Britten as a school boy

Britten at work

Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears in 1940 and 1975

The Queen at Snape Maltings Concert Hall in 1967 and 1970

Paul Bunyan, 1941

Operetta

Libretto by W.H. Auden

Premiered at Columbia University, New York City

Peter Grimes Grand Opera

libretto by Montagu Slater based on George Crabbe’s poem The Borough (1810)

premiered at Covent Garden, London, 1945

Aldeburgh Festival, outdoor performance

The Rape of Lucretia Chamber Opera

Libretto by Ronald Duncan

Premiered at Glyndebourne, 1946

Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY

Albert Herring Comic Chamber Opera

Libretto by Eric Crozer after a short story by Guy de Maupassant

Premiered at Glyndebourne, 1947

Los Angeles Opera

The Little Sweep

Children’s Opera

Libretto by Eric Crozier

Premiered at Aldeburgh Festival, 1949

Billy Budd Grand Opera

Libretto by E.M.Forster and Eric Crozier after novella Billy Budd, Foretopman by Herman Melville (1891)

Premiered at Covent Garden, London, 1951

Metropolitan Opera, NY

Gloriana Grand Opera

Libretto by William Plomer after Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex (1928)

Premiered at Covent Garden, London, 1953

Written in celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

Opera Theater of St. Louis

The Turn of the Screw Chamber Opera

Libretto by Myfanwy Piper after the short story by Henry James (1898)

Premiered at La Fenice, Venice, 1954

Israeli Opera, Tel Aviv

Noye’s Fludde Church Opera

Libretto from the Medieval Mystery Play of the same name.

Premiered at Orford Church, Suffolk, 1958

Moonrise Kingdom (movie), Wes Anderson, director

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Grand Opera

Libretto by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears based on the play by Wm. Shakespeare

Premiered at Aldeburgh Festival, 1960

Chicago Lyric Opera

Curlew River

Church Parable

Libretto by William Plomer after the medieval Japanese Noh play Sumidagawa by Juro Motomasa (1395-1431)

Premiered at Orford Church, Suffolk, 1964

Royal Academy Opera

The Burning Fiery Furnace

Church Parable

Libretto by William Plomer based on the Book of Daniel, Chapter 3

Premiered at Orford Church, Suffolk, 1966

The Prodigal Son

Church Parable

Libretto by William Plomer based on the New Testament Parable, Luke 15:11-32

Premiered at Orford Church, Suffolk, 1968

Aldeburgh Festival

Owen Wingrave

Television Opera

Libretto by Myfanwy Piper after the short story by Henry James (1892)

Premiered on BBC2 Television, 1971

Opera Trionfo

Death in Venice

Grand Opera

Libretto by Myfanwy Piper after Thomas Mann’s novella

Premiered at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh Festival, 1973

English National Opera

Grand Opera:

Peter Grimes (1945)

Billy Budd (1951)

Gloriana (1953)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960)

Death in Venice (1973)

Chamber Opera:

The Rape of Lucretia (1946)

Albert Herring (1947)

The Turn of the Screw (1954)

Operetta:

Paul Bunyan (1941)

Church Opera:

Noye’s Fludde (1958)

Church Parables

Curlew River (1964)

The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966)

The Prodigal Son (1968)

Children’s Opera

The Little Sweep (1949)

Television Opera

Owen Wingrave (1971)

George Crabbe (1754-1832) and The Borough (1810)

Aldeburgh coastline, Suffolk, UK

Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK

The Apprentice and Innocence Lost

Peter Grimes (Peter Pears) and the

apprentice (Leonard Thompson) in the

1945 Sadler’s Wells production of Peter

Grimes.

Child labor and workhouse children

Peter Grimes Act II, Scene 1 – “Grimes is at his exercise”

Peter Grimes as the Outsider

Peter Grimes (Peter Pears) and the

apprentice (Leonard Thompson) in the

1945 Sadler’s Wells production of

Peter Grimes.

Benjamin Britten …

“A central feeling for us [in Peter Grimes] was that of the individual against the crowd; with ironic overtones of our own situation. As conscientious objectors we were out of it … this feeling led us to make Grimes a character of vision and conflict, the tortured idealist he is, rather than the villain he is in Crabbe” (74).

Seymour, Claire. The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2004. Print.

Text for chorus at end of Act III:1

Who holds himself apartLets his pride rise. Him who despises us We’ll destroy. And cruelty becomes His enterprise. Him who despises us We’ll destroy.Our curse shall fall upon his evil day. We shall Tame his arrogance. We’ll make the murderer pay for his crime. Peter Grimes! Grimes!

Peter Grimes, Act III, Scene 1 Royal Opera, Covent Garden

Britten and Pears in

Venice in the 1950s

Peter Pears …

“For Ben, [Death in Venice] was, in some way, a summing up of what he felt, inspired even by the memories of his own idyllic childhood … At the end Aschenbach asks what it is he has spent his life searching for. Knowledge? A lost innocence? And must the pursuit of beauty, of love, lead only to chaos? All question Ben constantly asked himself” (101).

Kennedy, Michael. Benjamin Britten. London: Dent, 1981/1993. Print.

Thomas Mann in 1911,

aged 36, the year he

published Death in Venice.

Gustav von

Aschenbach

and Lost

Innocence

Apollo and Dionysus

rational emotionalknowledge intuitionlimits no limitsindividual groupmoderation excessclear borders no bordersdreams ecstasy self-control frenzytemperance intoxicationorder chaosnative foreignWest Eastmale female /androgynous

Tadzio

as the

Outsider

Britten, Pears, and the Prince and Princess of Hesse and the Rhine in Indonesia in 1956

Gamelan Instruments

Gamelan Orchestras

The Hotel des Bains, The Lido, with Venice in the background

Map of Venice and the Lido

Death in Venice, final scene, film, Tony Palmer dir., 1980