Another listen to Owen Wingrave

owenwingraveBritten’s Owen Wingrave is a curiously neglected opera.  It’s rarely performed live and the only recorded versions are 2 CD recordings plus DVDs of TV productions.  The earliest of each feature Benjamin Luxon in the title role and Peter Pears as General Wingrave.  The DVD version holds up surprisingly well for a 1970 TV production.  The later DVD version is also over 20 years old and features Gerald Finley in a, to my mind, ill conceived production for Channel 4 updated to the 1950s.  So I was interested to get my hands on a 2008 Chandos recording with Peter Coleman-Wright as Owen.

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Langridge’s Grimes

grimes-langridgeEarlier this month I was reviewing a new CD recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes for Opera Canada (you can read it in the Fall 2020 issue or here).  It’s a rather good performance from the Bergen Philharmonic with Stuart Skelton in the title role.  In digging into previous recordings while writing that review I came across a 1995 recording with Philip Langridge in the title role.  I was familiar with his ENO performance which was brilliant and is captured on DVD but there are serious issues with that recording so I was delighted to be able to have another listen.

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