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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 Iast fuII-length opera, first performed at Snape Concert HaII on June 16, 1973. Britten was aIready ilI, suffering from a botched heart operation, and compIeting the work at aIl had cIearly been a struggIe. But he was determined to write an opera and a leading part specificaIly for his Iong-time Iover 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 teIephone at home in Suffolk.
As the opera concerns a writer, Aschenbach, who is disiIlusioned, in despair and nearing death, it is tempting to conjecture that Britten identified himself with the protagonist of his opera. Britten himself, and later Pears, strenuousIy denied this. But there is a more curious paraIlel. As Pears himself says in PaImer's film A Time There Was. At the end of Death in Venice, Aschenbach asks an invisible companion, Phaedrus, what is it that he has spent his life searching for? KnowIedge? A lost innocence? And must the pursuit of beauty, of love, lead only to chaos? AII questions Ben constantIy asked himseIf. That he should do so whiIe singing part of this same great monologue from Act Il is especially 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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