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
Brown Opera Productions designers, production staff, and orchestra are all students. Directors and music directors are chosen at the end of the Fall semester and the operas themselves are usually in early or mid-April. BOP's most recent Spring production was "The Turn of the Screw" by Benjamin Britten. Performances are usually in Alumnae Hall on Pembroke Campus. Every year, BOP puts on an opera for children. Past productions have included a reduction of "The Magic Flute", "Hansel and Gretel" and a student-written opera, "The Frog Prince". The children's opera is only one of the many ways BOP reaches out to the Providence community.