About the work
Benjamin Britten's opera „Death in Venice" was premiered in Aldeburgh in 1973 — Britten's last opera, composed in the awareness of his own fatal heart disease. Myfanwy Piper's libretto is based on Thomas Mann's novella (1912). The opera is an unsparingly personal adaptation of the material — Britten identified with the ageing Aschenbach.
Plot
The aged German writer Gustav von Aschenbach, suffering writer's block in Munich, decides to travel to Venice to find inspiration. In the Lido hotel his eye falls on the fourteen-year-old Polish boy Tadzio, holidaying there with his family. Aschenbach is seized by an obsessive, never-spoken love. He cannot leave, watches Tadzio every day on the beach. A cholera epidemic breaks out in Venice; the authorities cover up the danger. Aschenbach could flee — but stays. In a dream he sees a Dionysian orgiastic ritual with Tadzio at the centre. Aschenbach has the hotel barber make him youthful with paint and dye — a grotesque gesture of desperation. On the last day, on the beach, he sees Tadzio in the distance. He dies in his deck chair, gazing.
Cultural significance
Death in Venice is Britten's most personal work and his legacy — composed for his life partner Peter Pears as Aschenbach. The role of Tadzio is a pure dance role without singing — an unusual dramaturgical solution. The musical language combines Britten's lyrical style with gamelan-inspired sonorities (for Tadzio's otherworldly realm). Productions by Colin Graham (premiere), Robert Carsen and John Cox shaped the performance tradition. Luchino Visconti's famous 1971 film had additionally inspired Britten.