{"title":"‘In my end is my beginning’: Peter Grimes and Death in Venice","authors":"Sterling Lambert","doi":"10.1017/S0954586722000064","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Benjamin Britten, gravely ill at the time of its composition, was surely aware that Death in Venice would be his last opera, and it is not surprising that the work should make reference to his first opera, Peter Grimes, as if to bookend his entire operatic career, and survey the enormous distance he had travelled, as a hallmark of what might be considered the composer's late style. Even so, the dramatic and musical relationships between the two works are unusually extensive. Both operas concern an outsider at odds with the society around him, in a strange reflection of the composer's particular situation as he wrote each work. Each is set in a place particularly special to the composer, where land borders sea in a metaphor for the boundary between life and death. Finally, the protagonist's interactions with a mysterious silent boy in each case hints at a part of Britten's character that dared not speak its name. These dramatic correspondences are paralleled in important musical connections between the operas, despite their ostensibly very different musical languages. Britten's final opera could therefore be understood to exemplify the famous words borrowed by T.S. Eliot from Mary, Queen of Scots: ‘In my end is my beginning’, an appropriate concept given the degree to which Britten was occupied with Eliot's verse at this time.","PeriodicalId":42672,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Opera Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"97 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cambridge Opera Journal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586722000064","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MUSIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract Benjamin Britten, gravely ill at the time of its composition, was surely aware that Death in Venice would be his last opera, and it is not surprising that the work should make reference to his first opera, Peter Grimes, as if to bookend his entire operatic career, and survey the enormous distance he had travelled, as a hallmark of what might be considered the composer's late style. Even so, the dramatic and musical relationships between the two works are unusually extensive. Both operas concern an outsider at odds with the society around him, in a strange reflection of the composer's particular situation as he wrote each work. Each is set in a place particularly special to the composer, where land borders sea in a metaphor for the boundary between life and death. Finally, the protagonist's interactions with a mysterious silent boy in each case hints at a part of Britten's character that dared not speak its name. These dramatic correspondences are paralleled in important musical connections between the operas, despite their ostensibly very different musical languages. Britten's final opera could therefore be understood to exemplify the famous words borrowed by T.S. Eliot from Mary, Queen of Scots: ‘In my end is my beginning’, an appropriate concept given the degree to which Britten was occupied with Eliot's verse at this time.
期刊介绍:
Containing lively and provocative essays, Cambridge Opera Journal has a well-established reputation for publishing first-rate scholarship on opera in all its manifestations. The Journal not only contains material on all aspects of the European canon, it has now widened its scope to publish high-quality essays on American opera and musical theatre, on non-Western music theatres, and on contemporary works. Carefully researched and often illustrated with music examples and pictures, articles adopt a wide spectrum of critical approaches. As well as major articles, each issue generally includes reviews on recent publications of importance in the field.