Word: britten
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...BRITTEN: CURLEW RIVER (London). On a sojourn to the Orient in 1956, the composer was delighted by Japanese No plays, and one of them, Sumidagawa, is the inspiration for this one-act opera. It tells of a madwoman searching for her son, and her encounter with a boatman who explains his tragic death and shows her where he is buried. Scored for five male soloists, a chorus of nine and an orchestra of seven, Curlew River is a fragile work indeed, more tone poem than opera. Yet in a sedate, masquelike way, it has considerable melodic charm...
...first of the orchestra's 16 concerts in Peabody Auditorium attracted a glittering audience in formal dress, with a scattering of flowered sports shirts, slacks and sandals. Colin Davis, the brilliant 39-year-old British conductor, led off the all-British program with a rousing performance of Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, a kind of teaser course for the uninitiated, moved on to headier stuff by Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius and William Walton. The orchestra more than lived up to its reputation as one of the world's finest ensembles. Bolstered...
...fittingly reverent fashion, began the U.S. premiere last week of Benjamin Britten's Curlew River at the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, N.Y. Styled as "a parable for church performance," the hour-long piece is based on a medieval No drama, Sumidagawa. It is a simple tale of a demented mother in search of her lost child, and it unfolds like a morality play in slow motion, all the more compelling for the stark economy of its movement and action...
...male cast, headed by Tenor Andrea Velis as the madwoman, masterfully performed Britten's difficult, often eerie sing-speech style of vocal writing. The score was as delicate and intricate as a spider web, interlaced with the chatter of small untuned drums and plunking strings reminiscent of Oriental music. The most impressive achievement was that, in mixing such disparate elements as modern dissonances, a morality play and No drama, there was no clash of styles but rather a smooth melding into what is a new and wholly engaging musical form...
...Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw is an anomaly among operas. The plots of most are so banal or insignificant that opera lovers are notoriously satisfied with the often glorious music and the thrill of elegant productions; the plot becomes merely a vehicle for the rest of the work. But Britten has taken the Henry James novelette and written beautiful music which emphasizes its essential enigmatic horror. The score is absolutely perfect for the story: eerie, elusive, with a constant undertone of brooding malevolence...