Endlessly Memorable

Britten's 'Death in Venice'
from Garsington Opera at Wormsley,
reviewed by RODERIC DUNNETT

Death in Venice was the third and final opera on which Benjamin Britten collaborated with Myfanwy Piper. As the Piper family recalled, their mother was almost constantly on the phone to Britten, or vice-versa, discussing and fine-honing detail in exchanges that ranged from gentle feelings of the way to virtual battles: both she and Britten were well capable of fighting their corner. But theirs was undoubtedly a meeting of minds.

It had been so, this intellectual toing and froing, when in the early 1950s they were mapping out together The Turn of the Screw; doubtless something similar prevailed as in the late Sixties they teased out their other Henry James libretto, Owen Wingrave...

BENJAMIN BRITTEN

GARSINGTON OPERA

STEUART BEDFORD

PAUL CURRAN

UNITED KINGDOM