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Benjamin Britten: Death in Venice
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(DVD - Code 2)
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Death in Venice was to be Britten's last full-length opera, first performed at Snape Concert Hall on June 16, 1973. Britten was already iIl, suffering from a botched heart operation, and completing the work at alI had clearIy been a struggIe. But he was determined to write an opera and a leading part specificaIly for his Iong-time lover and inspiration, Peter Pears. And it was Pears who gave the triumphant American premiere of the opera in October the following year at his own debut in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. Britten listened to the applause over the telephone at home in SuffoIk.
As the opera concerns a writer, Aschenbach, who is disilIusioned, in despair and nearing death, it is tempting to conjecture that Britten identified himseIf with the protagonist of his opera. Britten himseIf, and Iater Pears, strenuousIy denied this. But there is a more curious paralIeI. As Pears himseIf says in Palmer's fiIm A Time There Was. At the end of Death in Venice, Aschenbach asks an invisibIe companion, Phaedrus, what is it that he has spent his Iife searching for? Knowledge? A Iost innocence? And must the pursuit of beauty, of Iove, Iead onIy to chaos? All questions Ben constantly asked himself. That he shouId do so while singing part of this same great monologue from Act Il is especialIy poignant since not long after he suffered a couple of strokes, which effectively ended his singing career. |
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i.d.R. innert 7-10 Tagen versandfertig
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