Benjamin Britten: Establishment Outsider? - five online talks by Richard Wigmore

In this online series celebrating the 50th anniversary of Britten’s death, writer and broadcaster Richard Wigmore explores the life and music of a complex, often troubled man who despite his celebrity was never fully at ease in the British music establishment.

Born, aptly, on St Cecilia’s Day in 1913, the youngest child of a Lowestoft dentist, Benjamin Britten showed precocious musical talent as a child. At 23 he achieved international success with his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge at the Salzburg Festival. The same year Britten met the tenor Peter Pears, who would become his lifelong partner and the inspiration of so many vocal works.

Early in 1939 he and Pears left Britain for the US. Three years later, disillusioned and homesick, the pair returned to Suffolk where Britten plunged into Peter Grimes. On its premiere in June 1945, it was immediately hailed as the first great English opera since Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Riding professional jealousy and homophobia, Britten became the country’s de facto national composer.

From now on every major new Britten composition was treated as a significant musical event. With Pears he founded the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948. He would reach a still wider audience with his War Requiem, premiered in the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962. By the early 1970s his health was failing. After completing his final opera Death in Venice in 1973 Britten underwent heart surgery that was only partially successful. Although a semi-invalid, he created several important works in his last three years, culminating in his Third String Quartet.

They take place every Tuesday from 24 February to 24 March 2026 at 4.30pm (London) and, including Q&A, will last just under an hour. They are available for viewing for eight weeks after the last episode is streamed (until 19 May 2026).