Page 149 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK
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A man not generous to his rivals: Benjamin Britten working on 'Billy Budd' in Aldeburgh,
1949 CREDIT: Getty
The Red House in Aldeburgh – Britten’s and Pears’s strikingly atmospheric home – will host an
exhibition about Britten’s friendships with women: a remarkably untrodden path. It looks at
female characters in his operas and is supplemented by music written by some of his female
friends and contemporaries, such as the composers Imogen Holst, Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth
Maconchy, Grace Williams and Doreen Carwithen – the last of whom is bursting out of obscurity
after a shameful period of neglect.
The Aldeburgh Festival ensures that what would otherwise be a remote cultural backwater enjoys
the highest quality of performance and visual art every summer. But the great enterprise at Snape
– which runs concerts, other entertainments and the training of musicians throughout the year –
also guarantees that the festival’s message lives on even when its crowds have left.
Many highly talented artists suffered during the pandemic because of their inability to perform in
public; and many of us felt deprived of the creative world on which we took it for granted we could
