About the work
Opera by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, based on Henry James's story 'Owen Wingrave' (1892); commissioned by BBC2 as Britten's only opera written specifically for television and first broadcast on 16 May 1971. Its stage premiere followed on 10 May 1973 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Plot
The young cadet Owen Wingrave tells his instructor Spencer Coyle that he has become a pacifist, defying a family tradition of military service spanning generations. At the family estate Paramore, his relatives and his fiancée Kate press him to abandon his stance; after his grandfather disinherits him and Kate questions his courage, Owen accepts a dare to spend the night alone in the house's reputedly haunted room. He is found dead there the next morning.
Cultural significance
For Britten, a committed pacifist and wartime conscientious objector, the work was a personal statement against militarism and war-mongering. He insisted on recording it not in a BBC studio but at his own concert hall, the Maltings in Snape.