Benjamin Britten on the Aldeburgh beach
Britten's boat at Aldeburgh
Benjamin Britten on the Suffolk coast in east England, an area where he was raised and lived for much of his life. The composer’s adult home of Aldeburgh was described by novelist E. M. Forster [second from the left in the boat image above] as a town that ‘huddles around a flint-towered church and sprawls towards the North Sea – and what a wallop the sea makes as it pounds at the shingle!’ That unforgiving yet expansive topography provides the literal and psychological backdrop for Britten’s masterpiece Peter Grimes and pervades every note of the opera’s four remarkable Sea Interludes. Hear the sound of the Suffolk seascape come alive Saturday evening at the WCFSO.
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