Which tenor created the title roles in Benjamin Britten's operas 'Peter Grimes' and 'Albert Herring'?
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings 1943 following his stay in America, Britten caught measles so severely that he had to be hospitalised for several weeks. Here, while also working on his libretto for "Peter Grimes", he composed most of the Serenade. The first performance was given at the Wigmore Hall in London on 15 October 1943 with Peter Pears as the tenor soloist and Dennis Brain on the horn. Britten and Pears recorded the piece with Dennis Brain and the Boyd Neel Orchestra in October 1944, and again in a famous recording for Decca records in 1963, when Barry Tuckwell took the horn part and
Benjamin Britten not his own in which Britten was a somewhat dazzled accomplice". The American public liked it, but the critics did not, and it fell into neglect until interest revived near the end of the composer's life. Britten's subsequent operas range from large-scale works written for full-strength opera companies, to chamber operas for performance by small touring opera ensembles or in churches and schools. In the large-scale category are "Peter Grimes" (1945), "Billy Budd" (1951), "Gloriana" (1953), "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1960) and "Death in Venice" (1973). Of the remaining operas, "The Rape of Lucretia" (1946), "Albert Herring" (1947), "The Little