Britten in the Theatre: A Provisional Catalogue

In 1952, I made a bare list of Britten's scores for the theatre, cinema and radio (of which nearly 40 were written in the three years 1935–7!). The list was published in Benjamin Britten, a symposium edited by Donald Mitchell and Hans Keller (London: Rockliff, now out of print). Britten's 60th birthday seems an appropriate occasion for further investigations, and the theatre music particularly recommends itself. How often in our time has a composer of Britten's stature been so intensively involved with the spoken theatre? Not surprisingly, it proved fruitful soil for many musical ideas that he was to develop later in his operas and other works.