Owen Wingrave

Owen Wingrave
Opera by Benjamin Britten
Peter Pears in the role of General Sir Philip Wingrave
Description	for a televised performance
Librettist	Myfanwy Piper
Language	English
Based on	short story by Henry James
Premiere	5 May 1971 (1971-05-05) broadcast, recorded at Snape Maltings, near Aldeburgh

Owen Wingrave, Op. 85, is an opera (originally written for a televised performance) in two acts with music by Benjamin Britten. The libretto is by Myfanwy Piper, after a short story by Henry James.

Britten had been aware of the story since his work with Piper on the previous James opera, The Turn of the Screw in 1954. BBC television commissioned an opera for television from him in 1966 and, in 1968, he and Piper started working on the libretto. The work was completed by August 1970.

The premiere was recorded at Snape Maltings in November 1970 and first broadcast on BBC2 on 16 May 1971. The music is influenced by Britten's interest in 12-tone serialist techniques. A large tuned percussion sections heralds the treatment in his next (and last) opera, Death in Venice. In addition to being an expression of Britten's own pacifism, he was reported as saying that this opera was partly a response to the Vietnam War.

Curiously, Britten had never owned a television at that time. It has been reported that he hated television and never owned a set at all. This is not strictly true. Perhaps he would have never purchased a set himself, but he was given one by Decca for his 60th birthday in November 1973.

Britten originally intended the work for both television and the stage, although after the stage premiere on 10 May 1973 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, it has rarely been seen in either medium. The US premiere of the opera was at the Santa Fe Opera in 1974, with Colin Graham directing the production.

However, in 1997, it was seen at Glyndebourne, following performances by Glyndebourne Touring Opera in 1995. A new production by The Royal Opera opened in April 2007 in the Linbury Studio Theatre, with a reduced orchestration by David Matthews. It was performed in May 2009 at the Chicago Opera Theateras well as the Wiener Kammeroper in Vienna directed by Nicola Raab with English baritone Andrew Ashwin in the title role. A new production was presented in January 2010 by Opera Frankfurt and directed by Walter Sutcliffe. Opera Trionfo (Netherlands) presented the opera in 2013 directed by Floris Visser and conducted by Ed Spanjaard and a planned reprise in 2014. Visser also directed the opera at Theater Osnabrück (Germany) premiering 16 January 2016 under the baton of Daniel Inbal.