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
Benjamin Britten Britten: "Benjamin Britten & his Festival" (1967); "A Time There Was" (1979); and "Nocturne" (2013). In September 2012, to mark the composer's forthcoming centenary, the Britten-Pears Foundation launched "Britten 100", a collaboration of leading organisations in the performing arts, publishing, broadcasting, film, academia and heritage. Among the events were the release of a feature film "Benjamin Britten – Peace and Conflict", and a centenary exhibition at the British Library. The Royal Mint issued a 50-pence piece, to mark the centenary – the first time a composer has featured on a British coin. Centenary performances of the "War Requiem" were given