Death in Venice and Beyond: Benjamin Britten's Late Works

Abstract

This article analyzes Benjamin Britten's late works through the lenses of late style discourse and theories of aging, showing how these final compositions can be read as a reflection of the ways in which Britten's illness and physical disability in the last years of his life prematurely ushered the composer into 'old age' and its attendant physical and psychological difficulties. From Death in Venice on, Britten's compositions display an unmistakable preoccupation with mortality, both in terms of subject matter and in terms of an even further finessed concision of musical style. While the stylistic decisions in these last works cannot be divorced from Britten's very real sense and eventual acceptance of the nearness of his own death, neither can they be wholly accounted for by it, marking as they do an undiminished capacity for creative achievement in the midst of significantly diminished physical capabilities.

Opera Singing and Fictional Truth

“…The opera's deeply sympathetic point of view of Aschenbach and its romanticization of his death were undoubtedly Britten's doing and express something of his experience, both as an aging artist in rapidly deteriorating health who was concerned that his creativity was on the decline and as a gay man drawn to prepubescent boys. 33 While there is incentive to posit an implied or, as Dorrit Cohn suggests, "second" author in Mann's Der Tod in Venedig, there is no such incentive in the case of Britten's opera. 34 One would merely endow this entity with precisely the same point of view as the actual composer, and doing so would only obscure what Britten had to say with his adaptation.…”