Word: britten
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...therefore, the future of modern opera lies on the stage and not in the old opera houses, which will still supply the voices and the size and the glamour for Mozart and Verdi and Wagner and their lessers. The composers seem to be aiming in that direction, for Benjamin Britten, as well as Menotti, has written operas for chamber orchestra and small cast. Britten's second, "The Rape of Lucretia," is on a Chicago stage now. If it comes to New York next year and is as much of a success as "The Medium" (still going strong on ticket sales...
...Britten: Introduction & Rondo alla Burlesca and Mazurka Elegiaca (Clifford Curzon and Benjamin Britten, pianists; Decca Record Co. Ltd., 4 sides); Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings (Boyd Neel String Orchestra, Benjamin Britten conducting; 6 sides). The first recordings of Britain's wonder-boy composer to reach the U.S. His two-piano music is written in a pure, archaic style reminiscent of Britain's 17th Century great, Henry Purcell, though Britten adds harmonic twists of his own. The Serenade, done in a more contemporary vein, consists of poems by Blake, Keats, Tennyson and others, set to music that is artful...
This week The Rape of Lucretia, the second opera from Composer Britten's one-a-year production line,* got a professional U.S. premiere from Chicago's vigorous young Opera Theater. Chicago, in turn, got what was, by the current depressed standards of opera-writing, a bang-up opera. Like the British, who first applauded The Rape a year ago, the audience in Chicago's Shubert Theatre found that homely, curly-haired Composer Britten, at 33, was not yet a new Richard Strauss come to judgment. But critics liked his forcefully discordant, often tender music, well married...
Like smart young Composer Gian-Carlo (The Medium) Menotti (TIME, March 3), Britten has written for a small cast and a chamber orchestra so that his opera can be performed easily and often. His newest music is easier to listen to than to sing. Said Baritone Frank Rogier, who sang the role of Seducer Tarquinius: "Any time you sound in tune with the orchestra, you're off. So you go in the other direction." But Britten's insistent, subtle use of rhythmic and dissonant backgrounds put a wallop into Librettist Ronald Duncan's seething play. The opera...
...Chicago Symphony's new conductor, Artur Rodzinski, who longs to conduct opera as he once did in Europe, saw The Rape in rehearsal and went away excited. Said he: "The whole thing is very thrilling, full of new ideas. Britten has a very original language, which you can't compare to anything. Menotti you could say sounds like Puccini, but Britten is just Britten...