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Benjamin Britten: Establishment Outsider? - five online talks by Richard Wigmore
Tickets from
US$70
24th February 2026 - 19th May 2026
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).
Talks
This first talk looks at Britten’s precocious youth, his schooldays at Gresham’s in Norfolk, his encounter with Frank Bridge – who became his most important teacher – and his artistic collaboration with W.H. Auden, another crucial early influence. Works to be discussed include A Simple Symphony, the 1934 Phantasy Quartet, the pacifist song cycle Our Hunting Fathers – which scandalised audiences in 1936 – and the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge.
This talk will focus on Britten’s life and music during the Second World War, from his departure for the USA in 1939, where he composed Les Illuminations, the Sinfonia da Requiem and a Violin Concerto, through his gradual disenchantment with a country where, as he wrote, ‘everything comes too easily – money, wealth, luxury’, to his return to Suffolk in 1942. Here Britten wrote the haunting Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and began Peter Grimes, whose 1945 premiere made the composer a household name.
In the decade following Peter Grimes Britten composed no fewer than seven operas, from The Rape of Lucretia, written for Glyndebourne, to The Turn of the Screw, triumphantly premiered in Venice in 1954. Richard considers the themes and music of both these chamber operas, alongside the grandly scaled Billy Budd and the controversial 1953 coronation opera Gloriana, whose Covent Garden premiere was described by Britten’s friend Lord Harewood as ‘one of the great disasters of operatic history’.
Interleaving the Latin Mass with war poems by Wilfred Owen, the 1962 War Requiem is Britten’s supreme expression of his deeply held pacifist beliefs. While centering on the Requiem, this talk also explores the brilliantly inventive comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, composed for the 1960 Aldeburgh Festival, and the Cello Sonata inspired by Britten’s close friendship with Mstislav Rostropovich.
Britten’s final creative period is framed by the church parable Curlew River, inspired by the music he had heard on a visit to East Asia, and his Third String Quartet, partly composed in Venice and subtitled La Serenissima. We shall also look at the Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the pacifist television opera Owen Wingrave, and Death in Venice, completed just before Britten’s heart operation.
Expert speaker
Mr Richard Wigmore
Music writer, lecturer and broadcaster for BBC Radio 3. He writes for BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone and has taught classes in Lieder history and interpretation at the Guildhall, Trinity College of Music and Birkbeck College. He read French and German at Cambridge and later studied Music at the Guildhall. His publications include Schubert: The Complete Song Texts and Pocket Guide to Haydn. Twitter: @wigmoresworld | Website: wigmoresworld.co.uk
More tours led by Mr Richard Wigmore
Frequently asked questions
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Dates & prices
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2026
Date
Speaker
Price
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