Turn of the Screw in Aldeburgh

The death last week of Dame Felicity Lott had me thinking about English singers of that generation who featured a lot in the first live opera and recordings that I experienced back in the 1970s. A bit of digging around led me to a 1993 recording of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw with Philip Langridge (who died in 2010) as Quint and Felicity Lott (not yet a Dame) as the Governess. It also, perhaps surprisingly, features American Wagnerian Nadine Secunde as Miss Jessel. Less surprisingly, it was recorded in Aldeburgh with Steuart Bedford conducting.

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Grimes on the Beach

A performance of Peter Grimes in Aldeburgh to celebrate the Britten centenary seems loike one of those things that had to happen. The snag, of course, being that none of the performance venues there is remotely suitable.  The idea of staging it on the beach was a brilliant, if problematic, idea and it’s good that it was captured on film and is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
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Kupfer’s Orfeo

I’ve owned a VHS tape of Harry Kupfer’s 1991 Royal Opera House production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice pretty much since it came out.  I really can’t bear to watch VHS anymore so I haven’t watched it in ages and was intrigued when I managed to get my paws on a DVD copy and was able to see what I thought after all this time. Continue reading