Gloriana (opera)

Gloriana
Opera by Benjamin Britten
The composer in 1968
Librettist	William Plomer
Language	English
Based on	Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History by Lytton Strachey
Premiere	1953 (1953) Royal Opera House, London

Gloriana, Op. 53, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten to an English libretto by William Plomer, based on Lytton Strachey's 1928 Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History. The first performance was presented at the Royal Opera House, London, in 1953 during the celebrations of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Gloriana was the name given by the 16th-century poet Edmund Spenser to his character representing Queen Elizabeth I in his poem The Faerie Queene. It became the popular name given to Elizabeth I. It is recorded that the troops at Tilbury hailed her with cries of "Gloriana, Gloriana, Gloriana", after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

The opera depicts the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex, and was composed for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. Several in the audience of its gala opening were disappointed by the opera, which presents the first Elizabeth as a sympathetic, but flawed, character motivated largely by vanity and desire. The premiere was one of Britten's few critical failures, and the opera was not included in the series of complete Decca recordings conducted by the composer. However, a symphonic suite extracted from the opera by the composer (Opus 53a), which includes the Courtly Dances, is often performed as a concert piece.

On 22 November 1963, the composer's 50th birthday, Bryan Fairfax conducted a concert performance, which was the opera's first performance in any form since its inaugural production in 1953. When the production toured in 1954 to Manchester and Birmingham, Joan Sutherland sang the role of Penelope.The second staging of Gloriana was undertaken by Sadler's Wells Opera in 1966 with Sylvia Fisher in the title role.