WORKS

A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Rape of Lucretia
The Turn of the Screw
Death in Venice
Gloriana

RECORDING INFORMATION

These recordings of the remaining five Britten operas in the Decca catalogue are conducted by a mixture of the composer and two colleagues, Steuart Bedford and Sir Charles Mackerras. All are classics of the gramophone and while there have been a few other audio recordings of some of these operas none has matched what the composer himself had to offer by way of interpretative insights to these works.

The recording of Death in Venice was made under Britten’s supervision in April 1974 when he was already very ill and unable to conduct; it has the original cast of the opera which was first given at the Aldeburgh Festival of 1973 and is conducted here by one of his colleagues, Steuart Bedford.

Gloriana was written in honour of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and was first given at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 8 June 1953. It was not a success and rarely received performances until Josephine Barstow championed the role of Elizabeth I many years later; her magnificent assumption of the role was captured in this superb first complete recording of the opera, made nearly forty years after the premiere, in late 1992. Originally released on the ARGO label it is now available again as part of Decca’s Britten Edition.

This is the second volume in a projected series of Britten conducts/performs Britten.