Gloriana
This year's Aldeburgh Festival opened earlierthis month with a staged concert performance of the opera commissioned from Benjamin Britten on the occasion of the Queen's coronation 50 years ago. Far from the patriotic pageant some were expecting, the opera portrays the doomed relationship between the ageing Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex. But
Britten balanced this private tragedy with lavish masques, dances and grandiose choruses, as well as nods in the direction of the music of the first Elizabethan era.
Tiffin Boys Choir, Opera North Chorus,
Philharmonia, conductor Richard Hickox