Benjamin Britten

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

Omnibus was an arts-based BBC television documentary series, broadcast mainly on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. The programme was the successor to the long-running arts-based series 'Monitor'. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings. During its 35-year history, the programme won 12 Bafta awards. Among the series' best remembered documentaries are Cracked Actor, a profile of David Bowie, and Rene Magritte, a graduate film by David Wheatley, 'Madonna: Behind the American dream', a film produced by Nadia Hagger, and a profile of the British film director Ridley Scott. For a season in 1982, the series was in a magazine format presented by Barry Norman. The series was replaced by 'Imagine' hosted by Alan Yentob.

A specially staged 1970 BBC television performance of Schubert's Winterreise by Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten.

Robert Carsen's production of Benjamin Britten's opera for Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona.

BBC documentary exploring the dynamic relationship that developed between British composer Benjamin Britten and the BBC as they worked together to broadcast modern classical music further and wider. Through this collaboration, Britten's music reached television audiences, from elaborately staged studio operas to intimate duets featuring his partner Peter Pears to the massive Proms performance of his War Requiem. The programme features interviews with Britten's collaborators and singers as well as those working behind the scenes including Michael Crawford, David Attenborough, Humphrey Burton and soprano April Cantelo. James Naughtie narrates.

First transmitted in 1964, Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is performed at the Royal Albert Hall. The Melos Ensemble is conducted by Benjamin Britten, and the performers include Heather Harper (soprano), Peter Pears (tenor), Thomas Hemsley (baritone) and Simon Preston (organ and chamber organ). Also featured are the BBC Chorus and Choral Society, Boys from Emanuel School, London Philharmonic Choir, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

Omnibus was an arts-based BBC television documentary series, broadcast mainly on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. The programme was the successor to the long-running arts-based series 'Monitor'. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings. During its 35-year history, the programme won 12 Bafta awards. Among the series' best remembered documentaries are Cracked Actor, a profile of David Bowie, and Rene Magritte, a graduate film by David Wheatley, 'Madonna: Behind the American dream', a film produced by Nadia Hagger, and a profile of the British film director Ridley Scott. For a season in 1982, the series was in a magazine format presented by Barry Norman. The series was replaced by 'Imagine' hosted by Alan Yentob.

Three 1-hour films exploring British folk music from the rebirth of English romance to the latter day revival.

Robert Carsen's production of Benjamin Britten's opera for Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona.

Phyllida Lloyd's acclaimed adaptation for film of the opera that Benjamin Britten wrote for the celebrations of the Queen's coronation in 1953, based on the Opera North revival of a work now recognised to be one of the composer's great achievements. Paul Daniel conducts the English Northern Sinfonia, with a cast inspired by electrifying performances from Josephine Barstow and Tom Randall as Elizabeth I and Essex.

A spellbinding film of Benjamin Britten's hauntingly beautiful chamber opera, Curlew River, made to celebrates its 60th anniversary. The standout cast is led by internationally acclaimed tenor Ian Bostridge, as the Madwoman, in a performance lauded as 'heart-wrenchingly poignant', alongside the towering presence of Sir Willard White as the Abbott. Set in the ancient Fenlands of East Anglia, the parable's deeply evocative story tells of a broken woman driven to despair as she searches for her missing child along the banks of the Curlew River. This groundbreaking film interweaves live performance with filming in the Fenlands, framing the action along the hidden paths, on the waterways and under the huge skies of Suffolk's timeless landscape.

This is a live performance of BENJAMIN BRITTEN's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" shot at Teatro del Liceu in April of 2005 featuring singers DAVID DANIELS, OFELIA SALA, GORDON GIETZ & WILLIAM DAZELEY. HARRY BICKET conducts Orquestra Simfonica del Gran Teatro del Liceu. The production received such great reviews & audience reaction that performances continued in various opera houses throughout Europe that same year. The stage direction by ROBERT CARSEN also received rave reviews and is what is seen here in this program.

The Glyndebourne Opera's 1981 production of the Benjamin Britten opera, based on Shakespeare's play.

Benjamin Britten’s opera Gloriana was written in 1953 for celebrations around the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, to whom the opera is dedicated. It had its first performance at the Royal Opera House on 8 June 1953, in the presence of The Queen then just 6 days into her reign. The centenary in 2013 of Britten’s birth prompted this new Royal Opera production, in which director Richard Jones uses the setting of a celebratory pageant in 1953 to explore the work’s alternating splendour and intimacy. This theatrical, inventive and colourful staging has at its core the symbolic reflections between the Tudor Elizabethan and the New Elizabethan ages that characterize the opera. The juxtaposition of the modern and the archaic in William Plomer’s libretto is wonderfully amplified in music that artfully fuses the sounds and manners of Tudor England – from lute songs to courtly dances – with Britten’s own distinctive style.

Benjamin Britten's opera as performed by the English National Opera, with Philip Langridge in the title role.