Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station

The “young man from the local bus station” is obviously for Auden.

One of the major disappointments for me with the failure of Gerard Mortier’s plans at City Opera was the cancellation of the amazing Deborah Warner production of Death in Venice, which I saw at ENO two years ago. It had very effective use of light and shade and some great dancing for a change. DiV is creeping in to the standard rep too.

That people still debate whether Britten is a great opera composer (he is) and whether his operas are standard rep (some are) is unreal to me.

Amen!

That people still debate whether Britten is a great opera composer (he is) and whether his opera’s are standard rep (some are) is unreal to me. Grimes, Budd and the Dream are secure and so are the Screw and Albert Herring, a favorite of small companies and colleges.

I’ve seen at least one production of every one of his operas and one thing is abundantly clear: Britten had a major gift for writing for the stage. His sense of pacing, of being able to paint a mood with a stroke of orchestral color or a phrase, of text setting (by far the best setter of English ever), being able to conjure up vivid characters quickly, of setting and maintaining a mood are incredible. Give me Billy Budd, Turn of the Screw and Death in Venice over the rum-ti-tum florid nonsense of *shudder* Donizetti *shudder*, Rossini, Bellini and early Verdi any day.

I love that Britten’s operas make people uncomfortable and creeped out. I also that he didn’t bow to pressure and add female voices/trouser roles to Billy Budd, what a pleasure to have a full-length opera and not to have to hear a soprano for once. One thing I’ve not seen mentioned is that people tend to think to that Britten is “lusting” after the apprentice and Miles and so on, but it’s almost certain that young Ben was diddled when he was sent away to boarding school and I’ve long felt that his portraits of innocence destroyed were self-portraits.

Whether Britten openly put such ‘strange attraction /or fascination of chldrens’ antics into real action, no will never know. The outcome that people would best like to remember it ,is :he turned it in benign action, writing works exploring aspects of it. Then though, if people delve into what is plainly before you, discussing the subject openly : people become ‘queasy’.Unfortunately for his own posterity, he never wrote an opera with passionate moments for a female to put people ‘off the scent’.

The big wrestling match in Britten’s operas is between the 2 tantalizing ‘opposing hints’ ever present, and struggling. That of (a) inner repression and (b) the unrequited, …the need for open full expression.
Sums up Britten himself exactly.

Mirrored in just one photograph taken by Vogue once, in an article: what was supposedly Britten’s bedroom …….making great point of a bed ( a single bed). People know it was complete rot.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6258090/Frank-Johnson-why-being-clasped-by-Maria-Callas-was-my-finest-hour.html

which is elegantly written and great fun.

But less provocative, of course.

Well Alexthymia :Lady, you have me so wiled up at your off the mark accusations I now will reveal who the child was. IT WAS ME! That blows your hysterical argument and conjecture right out of the door!
Print it!

The play is pretty unequivocal:

‘For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy’

My two points are:

1. BB’s obsessesion with portraying children in unusual relationships in his works: Turn of Screw, Peter Grimes, DiV, etc.

2. Oberon is obsessed with getting the boy and NOT a champagne bottle full of uranium or a Maltese falcon. If the boy were a falcon or uranium I’d think differently of the situation and Oberon’s/BB’s motivation. Shakespeare’s motivation is a dif story, I think.

For Shakespeare the boy may well have been a MacG – but for Britten Im sure it had another significance. At least this is my belief. Is it so important that we agree on this point?

Let’s talk about Renaaay’s upcoming Armida instead…

As it is, he chose to run and therefore let the guilty verdict stand. What people reckon might have happened is very very secondary to that.

I know the Indian boy is in Shakespeare’s MSD and that there is nothing about sex mentioned in relation to the boy in either play or opera. My question though is why is Oberon willing to risk his marriage for an (underaged) boy and go through all of that crap? Is it a battle of wills? To prove some point? Not too sure about his motives.

You are right about 2nd hand gossip … but as I said I was just saying what I heard. So I repeat, it is what I heard and not what I know for a fact to be true.

However, all this still doesn’t change what I think about her boring music though.

p. 344. Britten’s friendship with David Spenser lasted until 1949, when David was fifteen and beginning to shave. “I was aware,” David says, “that whatever there had been was no longer there.”

Then it goes on to quote Britten’s rather lovesick-sounding descriptions of some of the boys he cast in operas, to cite the gossip about his perceived lack of discretion with them in the English Opera Group, and to discuss his close interest in the sons of Steuart Bedford and in other boys.

If Britten wasn’t up to something he was at least ill-judged, e.g., when filling adolescent boys up on martinis.

While some of the men who were befriended as boys by Britten declare themselves unaware of any improper attentions from the composer, some are unsure or don’t recall, and some say otherwise. Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy — who is now a gay man — says that he feels Britten’s “heart and affections” were with Pears but his passion was directed elsewhere. He says that Pears if anything seemed to encourage Ben’s interest in boys, though others involved in friendships with Britten as boys say that he treated them very differently when Pears was there and when he wasn’t.

I have just now become weary of this subject, but there’s plenty more in this bio, which I believe has been quite respected in its treatment of its subject.

I spoke to someone about this who knew them well enough to visit with them regularly, and he thought/knew that all was not right in with Britten and the little boys.

Well, repeating second hand gossip is the best way to settle the matter, isn’t it?

‘Midsummer’ has a heavy paedo theme – with Oberon after that little Indian boy. DiV! Also in ‘Turn of the screw’ with the children being (not sexually) terrorised etc. The death of the boy – and the nature of the relationship that Grimes has had with other boys who disappear/die. There is certainly a heavy light being thrown on children being hurt in one form or the other.

I have sung some of his songs and started to work on a role and gave up after Act 1. I am no pris, but I find this kind of operatic themes undesirable.

Also, I’m no Britten expert so please feel free to correct me. I spoke to someone about this who knew them well enough to visit with them regularly, and he thought/knew that all was not right in with Britten and the little boys. Also apparently his fondness of little boys really annoyed Peers? IF he were a pedarast or had tendencies I do not know this for a fact as I never knew him.

The only thing I can say with real confidence is that I find his music really dreary. This is like my opinion and I say this as someone who is passionate equally about Mozart, Wagner, A Scarlatti, Bellini, Strauss, Puccini, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Donizetti, Handel. As far as Britten goes, the loss is clearly mine. Although I do think I’m not missing much.

You can’t put Capuletti in the standard rep or even Norma if you’re going to include Lucia or Barbiere on the same list. Then there are the more popular operas than the ones by Bellini, Fille du Regiment, L’elisir, Cenerentola and Don Pasquale. Let’s not even mention revivals of Lucrezia Borgia or the Three Queens. Britten doesn’t compete with Rossini & Donizetti, but he does seem to be more revived than Bellini.

Last word: statutory rape is repressed puritan crap. Americans have their “justice” priorities all screwed up, but that’s not a surprise is it?

Do you know what standard repertoire means? Operabase is a wonderful research database, but 4 performances of Rossini’s Zelmira hardly make that opera a standard repertory opera.

Britten has 3 operas in the standard international repertoire. These operas receive a fair number of performances in varied venues around the world.

Bellini has also 3 operas in the standard repertoire and it seems that Capuletti if getting a foothold, as opposed to being something that is revived every 10-15 years and then put back on the shelf. That will make it 4 operas in the standard rep and thus 1 more than Britten and I think quite a good reason to say he bests Britten in the number of operas in the international repertoire.

“Rape” is language used by people with dirt and prejudice on their minds. They see sex as something disgusting, like the Puritans of 500 years ago. Sex creates life, that’s why we exist.

Consensual sex between an older and a younger person isn’t rape, unless you’re in America of course, where it’s okay to drop an atomic bomb and incinerate 300,000 civilians but it’s an outrage to have a costume malfunction and show your boobs on national TV, God forbid.

And a plea deal isn’t a deal until a judge honors it. Polanski had one, he had spent time in jail already as a result of the deal, being “evaluated”. Then the judge changed the rules in the middle of the game, backstabbing him.

This affair only helps to expose the American society, justice and culture as the corrupt and decadent institutions that they are.