Word: brittens
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Operas were still rolling off English Composer Benjamin Britten's promised one-a-year production line, but the new 1947 model seemed to have some rattles...
...Glyndebourne Festival opera house, tucked away in England's Sussex Downs, bright, young (33) Composer Britten's third opera in as many years had its premiere last week. It was Britten's first try at satirical comedy; his first two operas, Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia (TIME, June 9), were both dark and tragic. For the new opera, Albert Herring, Librettist Eric Crozier did a slapstick adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's cynical Le Rosier de Mme. Husson, in which an innocent village bumpkin goes off on a wild, sinful night after being chosen...
...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...
...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...