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
The Prodigal Son (Britten) The Prodigal Son (Britten) The Prodigal Son is an opera by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by William Plomer. Based on the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son, this was Britten's third "parable for church performance", after "Curlew River" and "The Burning Fiery Furnace". Britten dedicated the score to Dmitri Shostakovich. The first performance took place on 10 June 1968 in St Bartholomew's Church, Orford, Suffolk. The instrumentalists included the horn player Neill Sanders and the percussionist James Blades. Colin Graham was the stage director. The United States premiere was presented at the Caramoor Summer Music Festival on June 29,