Word: britten
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...Rosenkavalier in 1911.* There have even been few good tries (Deems Taylor's Peter Ibbetson, two by Gian-Carlo Menotti). Last week U.S. critics got a first look and listen to a year-old English opera, Peter Grimes. They almost unanimously hailed frail, 32-year-old Benjamin Britten as the most promising operatic composer...
...Britten's Peter Grimes, first produced in London in June 1945, had already been sung in Swedish in Stockholm, in Flemish in Antwerp, in German in Basel and Zurich. Last week at Serge Koussevitzky's summer music colony at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, U.S. audiences heard three performances in English...
...student casts alternated on different evenings in singing Peter Grimes. Tenors Joseph Laderoute and William Home in the title role wrestled with the high notes which Britten had created for his good friend Tenor Peter Pears (pronounced Peers) whose coloratura-like soarings are a legend in England. The most unimpressed member of the Tanglewood audience was Composer Britten himself. Said he stiffly: "There's no use pretending it was professional. ... It was a very lively student performance...
...Symphony Orchestra in nine concerts. U.S. premieres: Dmitri Shostakovich's new and brief (25-minute) Ninth Symphony, which Koussevitzky enthusiastically describes as "absolutely classic in form until sometimes it is very near to Haydn," and Peter Grimes, a widely touted opera in English by England's Benjamin Britten, commissioned by Koussevitzky and first played in London in 1945. The student production will be conducted by Leonard Bernstein, most famous of Koussevitzky's bright young...
Died. Fred Albert Britten, 74, longtime Republican Representative from Illinois (1913-34), who fought for a big navy and moral rearmament, against prohibition and diplomats; in Bethesda...