Here's a fascinating review of John Bridcut's Britten's Children, a book that traces Benjamin Britten's fascination with a succession of young boys and that obsession's role in the creation of so much of his glorious music.
Peter Grimes, starring John Vickers, was my first experience of live opera at the Met, but prior to that I had little experience of Britten's music. I was gob-smacked by the power of the opera and its wonderful orchestral interludes, but in the weeks after seeing it, I kept attempting to suss out why the townspeople of the Borough got so upset over the death of his apprentice William Spode. Sure, Grimes was an unlovable SOB, but surely apprentices in an occupation as inherently dangerous as fishing must die with some regularity (well, only once per apprentice, but I'm sure you take my point).
It was only as I began to listen to other Britten operas, such as Turn of the Screw and Billy Budd, that I realized that unresolved sexual tension was at the root of so much of Britten's work—and that the good folks of Borough weren't upset at Grimes because they thought him heedless of Spode's safety, but rather thought him capable of abusing the boy and then killing him to keep it quiet. (Yeah, I'm dense, but I hadn't been in the big city all that long then.)
I can't wait to read Britten's Children to see how better minds than mine—not to mention the facts—actually parse that theory.
