Death in Venice

That Britten wrote 16, mostly major operas makes him a key figure in the history of lyric theatre. And that Death in Venice was the last gives it a summatory, if not valedictory feel—especially as it was written when the composer was ill with what proved to be a terminal heart condition. But it was also the last work he wrote for his life-partner, the tenor Peter Pears; and the opera’s demanding central role of Aschenbach—onstage almost from start to finish—is a powerful and heartfelt tribute to Pears’ artistry. Composed in the early 1970s, it adapts a story by Thomas Mann that, by coincidence, was also being turned into a Visconti film at around the same time. Its narrative follows an ageing writer as he stalks Venice in pursuit of a young boy whose beauty is initially a source of aesthetic interest but then becomes a degrading, ultimately fatal obsession. Dark, disturbing, and for Britten (as for Mann) involving elements that could be called confessional, the opera’s spare, transparent music nonetheless delivers an exotic soundworld that makes Venice dangerous as well as dazzling. Gamelan-style Eastern colours wash against the heavy jangle of church bells. And as Aschenbach struggles between self-control and surrender to passion, he is ushered toward death by seven characters: all sinister, all played by the same baritone. The boy, though, doesn’t sing a note—to emphasise his otherness (and unobtainability), his role is danced.