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 National Anthem (Benjamin Britten) The National Anthem (Benjamin Britten) The National Anthem is a 1962 choral and orchestral arrangement of "God Save the Queen" by Benjamin Britten. The arrangement was written for the Leeds Festival. It has been described as an "extraordinary progression from pianissimo prayer to pealing, overlapping choral fortissimo". The piece was performed by Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra, along with the overture "The Building of the House", at the openings of two English concert halls in 1967. The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a purpose-built music venue on the South Bank in London which opened in March 1967. Britten prepared