A fringe group are doing The Prodigal Son and The Burning Fiery Furnace tonight and tomorrow (Nov 1st and 2nd) - sorry about the short notice but I thought I'd mention it as I seem to remember discussing those pieces with some of you.

I went on Tuesday and thought it was pretty good, although admittedly I'm not the best judge as I'd never managed to hear them before. It's in a church by the Albert Hall.

http://www.imperialopera.org.uk/v2/shows/britten-parables

I'm not sure that either is up to the standard of Curlew River, the first in the series. I saw BBF with most of the original cast when it was done at the Proms in the late sixties  (in the round in the Arena). Both together in one night can't have helped: if they're done as intended they're pretty intense and concentrated: the demands on the performers are extraordinary, and each was created as a complete, rather esoteric, entertainment.

I've always felt that the problem with the second and third of the series lies with the libretti. Whereas Curlew River is a translation of a Japanese story that is pretty timeless (as the Proms version from Brum showed very strongly) and has language that is similarly timeless, the other two are less sure-footed, with words which sound very dated already - the public school argot of the Acolytes in BBF in the 'Gardens of Babylon' sequence, for example, is as squirm-inducing as anything in Tippett - and even though there's some wonderful music (particularly the Benedicite, incidentally the composer's third setting of it in an opera) the fact that the stories are being forced into the straightjacket of the convention of the first parable really alienates them unless that convention has been set up, understood and followed in sequence.

Really? This would probably call for a definition of 'dramatically', but I find it more engaging, and musically satisfying, than almost any of them.

That's a shame; it would have been nice to meet you, Ruth.

I did warm to them,  and would like to hear them again, but unlike Curlew River they only seem to be available as part of "Britten Conducts Britten" vol 3 so I need to save up the necessary bawbees. I couldn't hear the words that well, especially not in The Burning Fiery Furnace, but perhaps that was a blessing in disguise based on what Ron says

The musical style did sound a bit different from Curlew River, but I can't put my finger on how.

Mary, thank you. You've just offered the most sensible and plausible reason yet for my feeling that Gloriana is almost the worst thing BB ever wrote!

Re Gloriana; it's worth asking whether he really wanted to write it. It doesn't really fit the patterns of the rest of the cycle: it was commissioned for the Coronation, and didn't quite fit the bill there either. Actually, I don't have the same problem with it as martle: it is perhaps a little uneven and dramatically unwieldy, lacking particularly his trick of pulling something extraordinary out of the hat right at the end, but there is some extremely fine music. I can't believe that he was really involved with any of the characters, or even cared about them, and that that somehow stiffled the creative spark that burns so brightly when he does have an obvious identification.

Mary, that's an interesting proposition about the two later parables and Death in Venice: was he really thinking about it that early? After all, there's Owen Wingrave in between. Do you have chapter and verse on when he first starting thinking about Thomas Mann's novella as an operatic subject?

I've just had a look at the Cambridge Companion to BB, and in the essay "Eros in Life and Death", Clifford Hindley says that according to Rosamund Strode, Britten's musical assistant from the mid-60s, his interest in D in V as a subject dated back to "at least 1965", the year of Curlew River. I think it's safe to assume it went back much further - Mann's son Golo was part of the artists' commune that Britten and Pears belonged to (with Auden) in New York in1940, and Auden, a huge influence on BB, was actually married to Mann's daughter Erika - a marriage of convenience so she could have British citizenship. Nobody's been able to prove that Britten ever met Thomas Mann (who died in 1955), though it's quite possible, but it is known that Mann knew BB's music, and said that if his Doktor Faustus was ever turned into an opera, BB would be the person to write it. So there was a big connection, BB would undoubtedly have read the novella at an early stage, and since everything was potential opera material to him, he must surely have thought of it....the change in the law on homosexuality in 1967 may have made him feel able to tackle a potentially tricky subject.

Perhaps he felt it was more appropriate to make a big public statement of his pacifism (if that's how Wingrave can be labelled), something he had always been open about,  than to do something he felt to be much more private. He could have the first performances of D in V in Aldeburgh, where he felt safe. Also, he knew little about television and didn't like what he did know, so perhaps he wouldn't risk giving PP's last great role to a medium he mistrusted.

I wouldn't have thought the Visconti film was "well established" while Britten was composing Wingrave.