Britten's penultimate opera, Owen Wingrave (1970), was commissioned by BBC television in 1966. It was the first and only opera written by Britten expressly for the then still youthful television medium. American television had gotten an earlier start in the opera business than its European counterpart. The first television opera anywhere was Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), commissioned by NBC. It's been a perennial feature of the television Christmas season ever since. Menotti's The Medium, had been televised as early as 1948 by CBS, but it was originally written and performed as a stage work.

It was NBC, among the American networks, that took the lead role in commissioning operas for television. After Amahl, NBC commissioned such works as Martinu's The Marriage and What Men Live By (1953), Lukas Foss's Griffelkin (1955), Menotti's Maria Golovin (1958) and Menotti's Labyrinth (1963). CBS countered with Stravinsky's The Flood (1962) and Martin's Lie (1965). The BBC began commissioning operas in the late-fifties, with Benjamin's Mariana (1956) and Arnold's The Open Window (1956). American television lost interest in commissioning operas after the 1970's, however, while commissions from the BBC picked up in the 1990's and have continued at a steady pace ever since.

Place in the Repertoire: Writing an effective opera for television is not simply a matter of performing a stage work under studio conditions and then transposing it to the small screen. The technical and fiscal realities of television dictate both limitations and new creative possibilities. The economic realities of television necessitate that the composer of a television opera exercise an economy of scale and means. The need for musical concision typically means dispensing with overtures, interludes, and curtain music. On the other had, television allows for swifter dramatic progression than is feasible on stage because the succession of visual representations can be made instantaneous, through film editing.

By the time he came to composing Owen Wingrave, Britten had already acquired some awareness of the special necessities for cinematic and television renderings of opera. His opera The Turn of the Screw (1954), like Owen Wingrave based on a short story by Henry James, had borrowed the flashback technique from cinema. Britten had also acquired considerable familiarity with the special requirements of television by his direct involvement in the sixties with television versions of his two most famous stage operas, Peter Grimes and Billy Budd. It is little wonder, then, that Owen Wingrave would emerge as one of the best-known and most successful operas written expressly for television, up to the present time.

The present recording was made at Snape Maltings in November of 1970 and had its first broadcast on May 16th, 1971. It received its first stage performance on May 10th, 1973 at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. The opera had its American premiere at the Santa Fe Opera in 1974. After that, it rarely appeared on either stage or television until it was taken up by the Glyndebourne Touring Opera and at the Glyndebourne Festival in the mid-1990's. More recently, Owen Wingrave has been enjoying something of a renaissance. It appeared again at the Royal Opera in 2007. Then, it received a production under the musical leadership of Richard Hickox in 2008 at London's Cadogan Hall, which was later released on the Chandos label. On May 16th, 2009, the opera had its Chicago debut in a production at the Chicago Opera Theater. There was also a production in 2009 in Vienna and one is scheduled for Frankfurt in 2010. Perhaps the opera's pacifist theme is finally beginning to find a receptive audience.

Subject Matter in Brief: The two act libretto for Owen Wingrave was written by Myfanwy Piper, after a short story by Henry James. During the orchestral prelude, which emphasizes the tympani and martial-style music, the camera hones in on the family portraits at Paramore, the ancestral home of the Wingraves, a family with an all-pervasive history of military accomplishments and sacrifices. In Act 1, Scene 1, Spencer Coyle (John Shirley-Quirk), a military instructor at Bayswater Academy, is teaching two cadets, Owen Wingrave (Benjamin Luxon) and Lechmere (Nigel Douglas), military tactics, using toy soldier replicas reenacting a Napoleonic battle. Though Lechmere is awash with ideas of military glories, Wingrave is far more skeptical about the brutality of war and the lives it shatters. After Lechmere leaves, Wingrave confides to Coyle that he has decided that a military life is not for him. Coyle warns him that his family will strongly disapprove. Owen is steadfast in his determination to be guided by his own conscience.

In Scene 2, the camera cross-cuts between Hyde Park, where Owen is reading Shelley and musing on his disdain for war, and the London residence of Miss Wingrave (Sylvia Fisher), Owen's stern old aunt, who is determined that Owen's thinking will be reset onto the correct path leading towards a military career. At the Coyle's residence for Scene 3, Coyle, Mrs. Coyle (Heather Harper), and Lechmere, over glasses of Sherry, discuss how Owen might be "brought around." Owen overhears the tail-end of the discussion and assures them all that his mind is quite firmly made up. He reflects on the tragic consequences that war has had for his own family, resulting in his father's early death, followed by his mother's death with a stillborn child.

Scene 4 finds Owen arriving to a seemingly empty house at Paramore, where he must first confront the many stern portraits in the ancestral hall. Mrs. Julian (Jennifer Vyvyan), mother of Owen's fiancée, is the first living member of the household to greet him (if greeting is even the appropriate term). She accuses him of being a shirker. Kate (Janet Baker), Owen's financee, enters and accuses him of betraying their joint childhood aspirations. Miss Wingrave appears next, adding further denunciations and insisting that Owen give up his selfish ideas and scruples. Owen is then sent to meet with his grandfather, Sir Philip Wingrave (Peter Pears), who accuses Owen of being a traitor. During the ensuing week, in Scene 5, Owen is subjected to every conceivable pressure and irrational argument, all designed to break down his resistance and set him right. In Scene 6, the Coyles and Lechmere arrive at Paramore, invited in by Miss Wingrave to intensify further the pressure on Owen. The Coyles, however, are disgusted by the treatment that Owen is receiving from his family. "All my life I have taught the art of war," says Coyle, "but for war in the family there is no answer in the books." Coyle, in a half-hearted effort to fulfill his duty to Miss Wingrave, suggests to Owen that he brought all of this trouble onto himself, but Owen counters by suggesting that perhaps Coyle taught him to understand war too well.

In Scene 7, the entire family and their guests gather for dinner. The Coyles attempt to lighten the tension with some casual conversation, but the Wingraves are having none of it. They continue to berate Owen, demanding obedience to the family tradition instead of selfish scruples. Owen angrily denounces war as a crime, causing Sir Philip to stomp off to his own chambers.

During the Act 2 Prologue, a ballad singer narrates a piece of the Wingrave family history. A young Wingrave boy had once refused to fight another boy who had called him a liar. The father, overseeing the incident, had marched the boy to his room and struck him across the head. The blow had triggered a hematoma and the boy had died. Later, the father had been found dead in the same room, without any overt indication of a cause of death. The room in question is now believed by the Wingraves to be haunted. In Scene 1, Owen recounts the story to Coyle, as they walk past the room. Kate and the others remain steadfastly opposed to Owen's pacifist views. Sir Philip demands Owen's appearance in his chamber, where he gives Owen "his orders": to abandon his obstinate views and proceed with his soldiering duties to his family and his country. Owen refuses and is promptly disinherited. Mrs. Julian sobs, bemoaning the lost opportunity for her daughter to regain her social status. Kate berates Owen and encourages Lechmere's increasing attentiveness, using the contrast of Lechmere's zealous ambitions of glory to further humiliate Owen.

One by one, the family members make their way to bed, leaving Owen alone with his thoughts. Owen soliloquizes in the ancestral hall, feeling finally free from the expectations of his ancestors, now that he's been drummed out of the family. "Now I am nothing," he says, "I bid you all farewell." Kate appears, too distressed to sleep, and, thinking herself alone, wonders what she is to do. When Owen makes his presence known, the two scold one another, leading Kate to suggest, finally, that Owen is a coward. He denies being a coward, but Kate demands proof. He must sleep in the "haunted room." After declaring her challenge a childish "dare," Owen agrees to do so and invites Kate to lock the door behind him.

In Scene 2, the Coyles, unable to sleep, discuss the evening's happenings and, especially, Kate's headstrong behavior. Later, Lechmere appears, also unable to sleep, and tells the Coyles about Kate's insistence that Owen sleep in the haunted room. As the Coyles and Lechmere are preparing to check on Owen, they hear Kate cry out, from outside the "haunted room." She had finally regretted her demand of Owen, but, returning to the "haunted room," had found him dead on the floor. The opera then closes with a return to the earlier ballad of the Wingrave boy, now intoning a tribute to the steadfastness of the Wingrave boy against his foe.

The film's pacifist message is clear enough, although Owen's death at the end is open to interpretation. One straight-forward suggestion would be that vain efforts on the part of young men to demonstrate their courage to their loved ones too often result in pointless deaths. More broadly, Owen Wingrave continues in the general vein of Britten's entire operatic oeuvre in presenting a character rebelling against conventional values and confronting, as a result, a hostile society. Another brilliant movie that covers somewhat the same thematic territory as Owen Wingrave is The Four Feathers.

Quality as a Work of Art: Musically, Owen Wingrave was one of Britten's most adventuresome efforts. Britten's late-career interest in aspects of 12-tone serialism creeps into the opera here and there and the role of the percussion section is enhanced in keeping with the opera's martial tone. On the other hand, Britten was determined to avoid the excesses of realism that he felt were too evident in the medium of television. Opera, he felt, even on television, needed to retain its atmospheric quality and stylization to maintain its special appeal to opera lovers. So Britten chose a sort of ghost story and insisted on using visual techniques associated with surrealism to ensure that this filmed opera would have an expressionistic quality.

Musical Performances: British baritone Benjamin Matthew Luxon was born in 1937 in Redruth, Cornwall UK. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He won a third prize at the 1961 ARD International Music Competition. He then joined Britten's English Opera Group, touring in the Soviet Union in 1963 while performing in various Britten operas. Britten composed the title role in Owen Wingrave expressly for Luxon. Following his success in that televised opera, Luxon began appearing regularly at the Royal Opera House and with the English National Opera.

English bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk sang the part of Spencer Cole. He was born in 1931 in Liverpool, England. He studied chemistry and physics before turning fulltime to a musical career. He played violin as a youngster before studying voice. He made his operatic debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1961 in Pelléas et Mélisande. Over the course of his career, he produced a vast discography. He was especially known for his performances of works by Mahler and Britten.

The part of Mrs. Coyle was sung by the estimable Heather Harper, an Irish soprano born in 1930 in Belfast. She studied music at the Trinity College of Music in London and then joined the BBC chorus. She made her professional operatic debut in 1954 in Medea. She was especially well known for her legendary performance in Britten's War Requiem in 1962, when she substituted for an ailing Galina Vishnevskaya with one day's notice. Her interpretation of the part of Ellen Orford in Britten's Peter Grimes was one of her signature roles.

The role of Kate Julian was sung for this recording by Dame Janet Baker. Baker was an English mezzo-soprano who performed both opera and lieder. She was especially noteworthy in her interpretations of the lieder of Elgar and Mahler. Baker appeared at Glyndebourne in 1959 as Eduige in Handel's Rodlinda. She debuted at the Royal Opera House in 1966. All the while, she was also wowing audiences in concert halls with her performances of lieder and in oratorios. Baker retired from opera in 1982.

Kate's mother, Mrs. Julian, was sung by British soprano Jennifer Vyvyan (1925-1974). She was a member of Britten's English Opera Group and was best known for her roles in Britten's operas. She had a strong and steady voice that also lent itself well to oratorio performances.

The elder Wingraves, Owen's grandfather and aunt, were played by Peter Pears (1910-1986) and Sylvia Fisher (1910-1996) respectively. English tenor Sir Peter Pears (pronounced like "peers") was Britten's longtime companion and starred in several of Britten's operas, though here his part is relatively small. He also sings the part of the narrator or ballad singer, at the beginning of Act 2. Pears was born in Farnham, England. Australian soprano Sylvia Fisher, an intimidating stage presence, was born in Melbourne. During the course of her career, she sang roles in operas by Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner, as well as appearing in operas as early as Lully's Cadmus et Hermione and as recent as Walton's Troilus and Cressida (1954), for which she created the role of Cressida.

Tenor Nigel Douglas, who sang the part of Lechmere, was perhaps the least well-known member of the cast for this recording. He (or possibly another Nigel Douglas) has written two books about famous opera singers. The vocal performances were excellent across-the-board. This is not the kind of opera, however, where the vocalism takes precedence over acting. It's the drama that seizes your attention in Owen Wingrave, more than the vocal excellence. Moreover, the orchestration has more inherent musical interest, for this opera, than do the vocal lines.

Britten himself conducted the 46-piece English Chamber Orchestra assembled for this production although, in truth, Britten had conducted none of the group's rehearsals prior to the recording and was thus presented with a fait accompli that was not entirely consistent with his own vision. A few of the passages even had to be re-shot because of Britten's objections.

Staging: The opera's most important set was, of course, the Wingraves' dwelling, Paramore. As Owen approaches the manor on his return home, we see the exterior (a painting, presumably), and immediately have the impression of a haunted house, all the more so because of the spooky musical accompaniment. Inside, the dwelling is austere, dark, and sinister, creating a pervasive sense of foreboding. The set designer was David Myerscough-Jones. The costumes, by Charles Knode, were well done, adding to the sense of Victorian rigidity.

The cinematography and editing for this recording were superlative. The filming was conducted using six video cameras running simultaneously. The video images are sharp and clear, serving the many close-ups shots very effectively. The editing made use of montage techniques, cross-cuts, semi-transparent overlays, fades, cross-fades, and, at times, fuzzy borders. The editing for Owen's so-called "peace aria" was especially brilliant, effectively highlighting that Owen's soliloquy was, in fact, a dialogue with his ancestors, as represented in the various portraits. The filming of the opera was directed by Brian Large and Colin Graham, two of the best in the business.

Technical Aspects: This Decca DVD recording of a studio performance from 1970 (first televised in 1971) is coded for all-region playback. The video clarity is high and is presented in full-screen format. The audio is Dolby Digital. The performance language is English. Menus are also in English. Optional subtitles are provided in English, French, German, and Spanish. The opera's running time is 109 minutes. The DVD includes a 15-minute bonus piece in which John Amis introduces the opera and interviews Colin Graham (one of the film directors), Myfanwy Piper (librettist), Peter Pears (who sang the part of Sir Philip), and Brian Large (the other film director). John Culshaw also talks with the composer, Benjamin Britten. The 26-page companion booklet has a full list of personnel involved with the production, a scene listing, a worthy essay by Philip Reed, and a synopsis. The essay and the synopsis appear in French and German versions as well. There are four black-and-white photos from the production included in the booklet.

Bottom-Line: This made-for-television opera has an anti-war message that is as apt today as it was in 1970 or in the Victorian era in which the story was set. The drama is strong and all the more so because of the ability to capitalize on the advantages of cinematographic and editing techniques available when operas are filmed for television or the big screen. Britten's score is well-designed to highlight the dramatic elements but not especially memorable after the film has concluded. In most respects, the music is more reminiscent of an effective film score than grand opera.



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You can easily access my other opera reviews using the following lists:

Top-Twelve Film Versions of Operas
Metalluk's Twenty Best Pre-Romantic (Baroque & Classicism) Operas, on DVD
Metalluk's Twenty-five Best Italian Romantic Period Operas, on DVD
Metalluk's Twenty Best Non-Italian Romantic Period Operas, on DVD
Metalluk's Thirty Best Operas of the 20th-Century, on DVD
Metalluk's Best Opera from Each Decade of the 20th-Century, on DVD

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age