Benjamin Britten Lord Harewood called it "the first genuinely successful British opera, Gilbert and Sullivan apart, since Purcell." Dismayed by the in-fighting among the company, Cross, Britten and Pears severed their ties with Sadler's Wells in December 1945, going on to found what was to become the English Opera Group. A month after the opening of "Peter Grimes", Britten and Yehudi Menuhin went to Germany to give recitals to concentration camp survivors. What they saw, at Belsen most of all, so shocked Britten that he refused to talk about it until towards the end of his life, when he told Pears that
Opera (magazine) Harold Rosenthal served as editor from 1953–1986, Rodney Milnes from 1986 and John Allison has held that position since 2000, with Milnes as chair of the Editorial Board. In 1965 Victor Gollancz Limited published a wide-ranging collection of articles which had appeared in the magazine during the first 15 years, with alongside those by regular "Opera" contributors, articles by Benjamin Britten, Sylvia Fisher, Magda Olivero, Helga Pilarczyk, Dennis Arundell, Osbert Lancaster, Joan Cross, Gottfried Schmiedel and Erwin Stein. An occasional series of supplements have been published: "Thirty all-time great recordings" (August 2002), "Great Opera Houses of the World" (July 2003),