Britten-Pears Foundation

 

Owen Wingrave

Owen Wingrave: from the Royal College of Music production, 1980

from the Royal College of Music production, 1980

Owen Wingrave was specifically conceived and composed as an opera for television. Although Britten had expressed reservations about the viability of opera on the small-screen, it was the highly successful filming of Peter Grimes for BBCTV in 1969 that convinced him of its possibilities and he subsequently took up the challenge. First broadcast in May 1971, the work makes use of several televisual techniques such as cross-cutting, montage and flashback - however, subsequent stage productions have proved the work to be no less viable in live performance than any other of Britten’s operas. Like The Turn of the Screw, the work is based on a story by Henry James: the story of a young man who, groomed for a military career, rebels against his family for whom soldiering is a way of life provided Britten with an ideal opportunity to make a public statement of his deeply held pacifist beliefs.

photo: Thierry Gachon

from the Atelier du Rhin production, 1996

Far from being mere propaganda however, Owen Wingrave is a characteristically rich and multi-layered work, the supreme irony of Owen’s predicament being that in his battle with his own family, he shows himself to be just as much of a fighter as any of his warmongering ancestors. The opera’s scoring too is highly distinctive, with the symbolic prominence given to the large and varied percussion section clearly pointing the way forward to Britten’s final opera, Death in Venice.

Listen

 Audio clips from Britten's own Decca recording with Benjamin Luxon, John Shirley-Quirk, Peter Pears, Heather Harper, Janet Baker, Jennifer Vyvyan and the English Chamber Orchestra.

  1. Act II, Prologue. ‘There was boy, a Wingrave born’
  2. Act II. ‘Now you may save your scornful looks’

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