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
Chamber opera Chamber opera Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. Early 20th century operas of this type include Paul Hindemith's "Cardillac" (1926). Earlier small-scale operas such as Pergolesi's "La serva padrona" (1733) are sometimes known as chamber operas. Other 20th century examples include Gustav Holst's "Savitri" (1916). Benjamin Britten wrote works in this category in the 1940s when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small performance spaces. "The Rape of Lucretia" (1946) was his first