Opera news
Like many economists of the Keynesian persuasion, I am not a fan of Benjamin Britten. If forced to sit through one of his tuneless, boring religious-themed pieces, I would at any given moment be tempted to get out of it by setting off the sprinkler system.
I realise, of course, that this is tantamount to shouting "Fire! Fire!" during Noye's Fludde.
"Shouting fire in a crowded theatre" is a tag from before all that tiresome health and safety, when the number of emergency exits to a building was not mandated by law and a panic in a crowded place was likely to turn into a stampede, which was likely to crush several people to death. When the phrase was coined, shouting fire in a crowded theatre wasn't just annoying and without redeeming worth; it was about as close to murder as a speech act can get; and it was regularly threatened to extort money from theatre managers.
ReplyDeleteI learned this from a display in the toilets at Sadlers Wells, of which I can now find no trace, so it's just possible I've imagined it all.
I can't vouch for the existence of said toilet display, but the basic thrust of what it allegedly had to say is true.
ReplyDeleteThis ties into the post below, obv; the absence of emergency exits in said theatres being a clear-cut market failure...
ReplyDeleteYou should give the Nocturne a whirl - it is really really good.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, I complained about not getting Britten myself recently in a Facebook entry - and got a reply from a friend who reckoned the later works were difficult but that Peter Grimes was "very accessible". Dunno about that, I tried it once and found it otherwise. Anyway, he also recommended the serenade for tenor, horn and strings.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to hear from you.
ReplyDeleteI was one of the little schoolchildren animals in a local perf.of Noyes Fludde and enjoyed it immensely: we had masks and everything.
ReplyDeleteAfter an unfortunate early experence with Peter Grimes I avoided everything by Britten for years. But I was converted by the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, and also the early setting of Donne's Holy Sonnets. I increasingly like the canticles too. There's also a fine Rostropovich CD of the cello music.
ReplyDeleteGroan.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, Britten wrote incidental music for On the Frontier, the last collaboration between Auden and Isherwood. The play had its premiere in 1938 at The Arts Theatre Cambridge--the venue, at the time, whose main benefactor and chairman was Maynard Keynes.
I don't think history relates what Keynes thought of the music; at least, Britten doesn't figure in the index of the Skidelsky biog.
I've tried more times than I care to think to 'get' Britten. Now, I get on with most of 20th century classical; even Penderecki gets a listen [1]. There's just something so... well, grey, about Britain. He's the sound of a damp bank holiday in the 1950s. And his recording of Winterreise with Peter Pears doesn't hold a candle to any of the Fischer-Dieskau/Moore recordings neither.
ReplyDelete[1] When Mrs J is out, of course.