Word: brittens
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...June he was awarded a life peerage that entitled him to be called, although no one did, Lord Britten. It was an honor that acknowledged Benjamin Britten's rank as Britain's finest living composer and one of its best throughout a long history. In 1945 he produced the one contemporary opera, Peter Grimes, that has found a firm place in international repertory. Of the 14 other operas that he wrote, Billy Budd may soon earn a similar popularity, and if it does not, the underappreciated A Midsummer Night's Dream should. His plentiful songs and chamber...
There last week at the age of 63, Britten died peacefully in bed when his weakened heart gave out. He had never fully recovered from open-heart surgery early in 1973 for implantation of an artificial heart valve. He came out of the anesthesia with partial paralysis of his right arm. The pity was that it ended his performing career. Playing with Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his friend Tenor Peter Pears, with whom he shared a semi-manorial brick house in Aldeburgh, Britten was a deft, expressive accompanist at the piano. He was an exceptional conductor, not only...
...Britten's music embraced a variety of styles-from church modes to 20th century dissonance-and there were those who felt that made him less of an original or innovator. History may decide differently. In his firm unwillingness to cut all links with the musical past, as so many important 20th century composers did, Britten prophesied a trend toward an assimilation of styles, old and new, that is only now gaining strength...
Dunster House Music Society. Britten, Handel and Nielsen by Beth Hilgartner on oboe and C.P. Wilkins on the piano in the library at 3 p.m. Free...
...South is incontestably the Houston Grand Opera (TIME, July 19). In his four-year reign, young General Director David Gockley, 33, has turned the company into one of the seven best in the U.S. The forthcoming season opens with Rigoletto (Oct. 15) but includes such attractions as Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes (Jan. 28) and Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea (March 25). Gockley's innovations include the creation of the touring Texas Opera Theater, which has successfully made a home in Texas and five nearby states; next month, for instance, Sousa's saucy operetta...