Benjamin Britten the apex of his reputation: it was almost universally hailed as a masterpiece." Shostakovich told Rostropovich that he believed it to be "the greatest work of the twentieth century". In 1967 the BBC commissioned Britten to write an opera specially for television. "Owen Wingrave" was based, like "The Turn of the Screw", on a ghost story by Henry James. By the 1960s Britten found composition much slower than in his prolific youth; he told the 28-year-old composer Nicholas Maw, "Get as much done now as you can, because it gets much, much more difficult as you grow older." He did
The Dybbuk: An opera in Yiddish The Dybbuk: An opera in Yiddish The Dybbuk: An Opera in Yiddish is an opera in three acts by American composer Solomon Epstein. The libretto was adapted by the composer from S. Ansky's 1914 play "The Dybbuk" and is apparently the world's first original Yiddish language opera. It was premiered and recorded at the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater, Tel Aviv, and at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba, in May 1999. The opera was staged in a 70 minute abridged version using the composer's piano-vocal score. It has not yet been produced with a full orchestra. Yiddish, spoken mainly by