ENO’s one-off presentation of Britten’s coronation opera – originally programmed as a platinum jubilee-year special – was destined to become a powerfully significant evening. A double tribute: not only to the late monarch herself, but to the ENO company itself – still very much alive, defying its would-be executioners by putting its heart and soul…
Tag: Benjamin Britten
‘Owen Wingrave’. A Family at War
For its Interim Season, Grange Park Opera is offering several new filmed operas to the public. Owen Wingrave, filmed in September of this year, is a rarely performed work by Benjamin Britten and was originally conceived as a TV opera. It was broadcast on BBC2 in 1971. For this reason alone I was very curious to see it. For…
Blistering Performance by Stuart Jackson on ‘Flax and Fire’
On Flax and Fire, operatic tenor Stuart Jackson offers a recording of love songs from the romantic repertoire of Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt and Hugo Wolf, with more contemporary works by William Denis Browne and Benjamin Britten. Britten opens the album with homages to Purcell but I really started to listen from track three. Um Mitternacht…
Benjamin Britten and the Challenge of Singing
Portrait of Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten by Kenneth Green 1943 The voice is an extraordinary thing. Air pumped from our lungs, passes over the fleshy folds in our throat, to emit a full spectrum of sounds. Some more pleasing than others. Last weekend I shouted and screamed so hard at a football…
Britten’s War Requiem finds new life with ENO’s staging
At the Coliseum to watch the first UK staging of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem on its opening night, I was curious to see how Turner prize-winning photographer, Wolfgang Tillmans would tackle this work as set designer. War Requiem’s reputation has soared since 1962, when it was first performed in Coventry Cathedral. As a choral work,…
ARTMUSELONDON 