Britten Gloriana

Benjamin Brittens opera Gloriana was written in 1953 for celebrations around the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to whom the opera is dedicated It had its first performance at the Royal Opera House on 8 June 1953 in the presence of The Queen then just 6 days into her reign The centenary in 2013 of Brittens birth prompted this new Royal Opera production in which director Richard Jones uses the setting of a celebratory pageant in 1953 to explore the works alternating splendour and intimacy This theatrical inventive and colourful staging has at its core the symbolic reflections between the Tudor Elizabethan and the New Elizabethan ages that characterize the opera The juxtaposition of the modern and the archaic in William Plomers libretto is wonderfully amplified in music that artfully fuses the sounds and manners of Tudor England from lute songs to courtly dances with Brittens own distinctive style