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
Chopin (opera) Chopin (opera) Chopin is a four-act opera by Giacomo Orefice (1865–1922) to a libretto by Angiolo Orvieto, premiered in Milan in 1901. The opera, which is "a wildly inaccurate account" of the life of Frédéric Chopin, is based entirely on his music, orchestrated by Orefice. The vocal score indicates the sources of the music, which include Chopin's sonatas, polonaises, mazurkas and nocturnes. The overture is based on Chopin's "Fantasy on Polish Airs", Op. 13. Act I is set in a village in Poland at Christmas time. Chopin declares his love to Stella (who is, like all the opera's characters except