The Cheltenham International Festival of Music is launched with a concert performance at the town hall of Benjamin Britten's last opera. Inspired by the Thomas Mann novella, the work tells of the elderly writer Aschenbach's final journey to a city caught in the grip of cholera, and of his fascination with a young Polish boy. Presented by Chris de Souza.
BBC Singers, City of London Sinfonia, conductor Richard Hickox

Act 1

8.15 Twenty Minutes: Rewriting Venice
How four of the novelist Thomas Mann's peers - Byron, Marcel Proust, Henry James and Ezra Pound - looked at Venice through prisms of their own making.

8.35 Act 2