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
Anne Wood (opera administrator) Wood was one of the prime movers in the creation of the English Opera Group, and was its general manager until 1951, working alongside Britten, John Piper, and Eric Crozier. In 1949, together with the soprano Joan Cross, Wood formed the Opera Studio, the first school in the UK to train opera singers; and by 1952 it had become the London Opera School, and in 1959, the National School of Opera, and later, London Opera Centre. For many years, she and her long-term companion, Scottish mezzo-soprano Johanna Peters (1932–2000) ran Phoenix Opera, a touring company. Wood died on 12 June