Word: britten
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...loud. Radcliffe's precise production of each type keeps the quieter music always vivid and makes for unusually brilliant climaxes. Above all, the Choral Society aims to entertain its audience; if their zeal occasionally sacrifices subtlety or stylistic nuance, it is worth the loss--this became particularly apparent in Britten's carol There Is No Rose...
...ancient Troy) was lusty, but the heavily sweet music resembled Walton's lyrical Viola Concerto more than his uproarious Belshazzar's Feast. The London Times called it "a great tragic opera," and the Daily Express hailed "the proudest hour for British music since the premiere of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes." Sir William made his own evaluation: "It won't please the highbrows . . . no atonal stuff." Moreover, he liked opera so much that he was off violin sonatas and string quartets for a while. Said he: "It's things like this opera that bring...
...Contemporary Music, which used to play host to such startling modern operas as Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and Dmitry Shostakovich's The Lady Macbeth of Mzensk, last week unveiled a collaboration between two chilly and notably elegant talents: Britain's Composer Benjamin Britten and America's late, great Author Henry James. The work: Britten's opera version of The Turn of the Screw...
Venice's handsome La Fenice theater was festively decked with roses as the full-dress crowd drifted in from gondolas. On hand in person to conduct the world premiere, wearing a white suit and red tie, was Composer Britten, 40. On a stark stage, British Tenor Peter Pears sang the prologue ("It is a curious story. I have it written in faded ink . . ."). From then on. the plot followed the outlines of the Henry James chiller about a young governess in an English country house who attempts to protect her young charges from the evil doings of a pair...
...seemed fairly baffled by the refined music and the obscure Jamesian plot, made no clearer by the strange language (the libretto, by Welsh-English Writer Myfanwy Piper, was sung in English). But the audience politely brought the fine English cast back for eight curtain calls. Wrotem Il Tempo of Britten's score: "A type of anthology of modern musical taste." Corriere della Sera applauded Britten's "sinister castle of sounds," but found it "difficult to establish even approximately what the new opera is meant to signify...