Word: brittens
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Purcell: The Fairy Queen (English Chamber Orchestra, Ambrosian Opera Chorus, Benjamin Britten conducting; London; 2 LPs; $ 11.98). A master at conducting his own music, Britten has also in recent years given us fascinating interpretations of other composers' work −notably the Mozart G Minor Symphony and the Bach Brandenburg Concertos. The neglected Fairy Queen-half opera half masque-is perhaps his finest effort: vibrantly joyous, magisterial in its command yet tender in the plaints of the soloists (especially Bass John Shirley-Quirk's Next, winter comes slowly...
Opera Star Eleanor Steber, 57, now largely confines herself to concert appearances and to teaching at the Cleveland Institute, Juilliard and the New England Conservatory. But for the American première of Benjamin Britten's opera Owen Wingrave, in Santa Fe, N. Mex., the soprano sang the role of the old battle-ax aunt to Alan Titus' young Owen. Letting out all the stops, Steber, done up in Victorian rig, calls her nephew a coward for not following in the family's military tradition. How did it feel to play the heavy for a change...
...other major roles include an old fop who presages decay, and a satanic barber who rouges the hero's face for his final and failing encounter with Tadzio. All are emanations of death, and all are sung with a consummate leaven of evil power by another Britten regular, Bass-Baritone John Shirley-Quirk...
...Britten's characteristic eclecticism dominates the score. As always, he fits great economy of means to his amazing instrumental versatility: a platonic ode to Phaedrus is decorated with a harp; the oncoming plague is heralded by a growling dark tuba. The overture to Venice is glitteringly warm, like the Adriatic itself...
...year later to New York's Metropolitan Opera. Although such an intimate drama could well be lost in those huge houses, it is clear that the ailing master of English opera has fused moral theme with artistic creation into what Thomas Mann himself might have hailed as Britten's Gesamtkunstwerk. *Lawrence Malkin