Benjamin Britten

As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situation gradually grows worse as the bishop becomes more controlling, but dedicated relatives make a valiant attempt to aid Emilie, Fanny and Alexander.

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

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 It was written to mark the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

In Benjamin Britten's operatic adaptation of Henry James' masterwork, a naive governess (Helen Field) arrives at a country manor and soon discovers that it holds a murky secret involving her charges and two ghostly servants who wield a sinister influence on them. The taut, atmospheric production also stars Sam Linay, Machiko Obata, Menai Davies and Phyllis Cannan, with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra providing accompaniment.

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.

With ancient Rome as a backdrop, composer Benjamin Britten's chamber opera chronicles the undoing of the virginal Lucretia at the hands of Tarquinius. Stars Kathryn Harries, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Russell Smythe and Jean Rigby imbue the lead roles with fervor and suspense while the English National Opera Orchestra provides spectacular musical accompaniment to this powerful synthesis of Greek tragedy and opera.

Death in Venice was Britten's final opera--an extraordinarily atmospheric and haunting adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella, evoking the grandeur and shabbiness of a Venice in the grip of disease. He eloquently and evocatively describes the moral and physical degeneration of Aschenbach, the writer whose obsessive pursuit of beauty in the form of a boy leads him into humiliation and death. Robert Tear takes the demanding role of Aschenbach opposite Alan Opie, who sings the various baritone parts. To portray the beauty and fascination of the Polish family and Tadzio, Britten made prominent the use of dance, by turning these characters into dancers, choreographed in this production by Martha Clarke. This new production for Glydebourne is directed by Stephen Lawless and conducted by Graeme Jenkins.

A housewife galvanises her docker husband to take an interest in more important matters than the football pools.