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
Benjamin Britten (a 'second founder') of opera. The same can already be said today, as far as the modern British – perhaps not only British – field goes, of Britten". In addition to his own original operas, Britten, together with Imogen Holst, extensively revised Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" (1951) and "The Fairy-Queen" (1967). These "realisations" brought Purcell, who was then neglected, to a wider public, but have themselves been neglected since the dominance of the trend to authentic performance practice. His 1948 revision of "The Beggar's Opera" amounts to a wholesale recomposition, retaining the original melodies but giving them new, highly sophisticated