A tour of The Red House
Introduction
The Red House at Aldeburgh was the home of the composer Benjamin Britten and his partner the tenor Peter Pears from 1957 until their respective deaths in 1976 and 1986. Much of the music on which Britten’s enduring reputation rests was composed in this house, including most famously the War Requiem, the stage works Noye’s Fludde, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Owen Wingrave, and Death in Venice, the three church parables, and a host of other orchestral, chamber and choral works.
The Red House was also the place from where Britten and Pears planned the Aldeburgh Festival, both on a year by year basis and including the massive project to convert part of the Old Maltings at Snape into a concert hall opened in 1967 (and then its rebuilding after a disastrous fire in 1969 to be ready again for the Festival in 1970).
The foundation and development of the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies at Snape (now the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme) was also driven by Pears and Britten from the house.
Britten rehearsing with Yehudi Menuhin at The Red House, 1958
Perhaps above all the house provided an essentially private creative and social space for performers and a wide variety of other musical, literary and artistic figures, who came here to rehearse and perform with Britten and Pears, to work with them on collaborative projects and to draw inspiration from the unique creative atmosphere that Britten and Pears instilled at The Red House.