Page 610 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024
P. 610
06 July 2024
Benjamin Britten’s surprising
habit of ‘Christianising’ non-
Christian stories in his operas
Michael White
July 6, 2024 at 1:00 pm
Benjamin Britten was one of those composers whose religious leanings were
unclear; and as a gay man in mid-20th Century England, he had few reasons
to love a Church that showed little sign of loving him.
But he nonetheless produced quantities of music for church performance,
much of it significant. And his stage works had an interesting habit of
“Christianising” non-Christian stories – an example being Curlew
River which played in this summer’s 75th edition of the Aldeburgh Festival.
Written in 1964, Curlew River was the first of Britten’s so-called Church
Parables: short operas written for performance not in theatres but in sacred
spaces, and designed for staging in the austere, ritualised manner of a
liturgical drama enacted by some monastic community.
With music that grows out of plainsong, they feel ancient, timeless (in a
