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
Violet (opera) November 2005 at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, directed by Tess Gibbs and conducted by Clive Timms. Scruton is better known as a writer and philosopher, and is largely self-taught as a composer. "Violet" is the second of Scruton's two operas – it was preceded by the one-act "The Minister" (1998). According to The Times' critic Hilary Finch, Scruton's first opera was influenced by Benjamin Britten, whereas according to a review by David Conway, "Violet" is influenced by Janáček, a composer Scruton is known to admire. The score includes a number of references to music of other