Benjamin Britten village of Snape, six miles inland, became available for hire, Britten realised that the largest of them could be converted into a concert hall and opera house. The 830-seat Snape Maltings hall was opened by the Queen at the start of the twentieth Aldeburgh Festival on 2 June 1967; it was immediately hailed as one of the best concert halls in the country. The hall was destroyed by fire in 1969, but Britten was determined that it would be rebuilt in time for the following year's festival, which it was. The Queen again attended the opening performance in 1970. The
John Culshaw commissioned Britten's opera "Owen Wingrave," written expressly for television. He also persuaded Britten to conduct television productions of "Peter Grimes" and Mozart's "Idomeneo", and to accompany Pears in Schubert's "Winterreise". Britten and Pears invited him to Snape, not far from their base at Aldeburgh in Suffolk and he encouraged them to transform the Snape Maltings into a concert-hall. He later initiated the Benson and Hedges music festival at Snape and was planning the fourth season at the time of his death. Some of his BBC programmes have been preserved on DVD, including films of the Amadeus Quartet playing works by