Benjamin Britten coast close to Britten's homeland, awakened in him such longings for England that he knew he must return. He also knew that he must write an opera based on Crabbe's poem about the fisherman Peter Grimes. Before Britten left the US, Koussevitzky, always generous in encouraging new talent, offered him a $1,000 commission to write the opera. Britten and Pears returned to England in April 1942. During the long transatlantic sea crossing Britten completed the choral works "A Ceremony of Carols" and "Hymn to St Cecilia". The latter was his last large-scale collaboration with Auden. Britten had grown away from
Opera in Dutch a minor strand in opera performance which persisted, with closures and openings of various opera companies, until World War I, and again in the inter-war years. A revived attempt to produce operas sung in Dutch was made by De Nederlandse Opera in the years following World War II. Similarly in Belgium the Vlaamse Opera sang French and Italian works in Dutch till the 1980s. Peter Benoit produced his first opera in Flemish, "Het dorp in't gebergte" (A Mountain Village) in Brussels in 1856. Peter-Jan Wagemans' 2006 opera "Legende" premiered in 2011 at De Nederlandse Opera. Opera in Dutch Opera in