Chapter 4 - Britten’s Circle

Summary

Britten and Pears had astonishingly hectic professional lives. Outside of Britten’s composing commitments and Pears’s singing career, they had a busy schedule of touring together as a recital duo, premiering operas, and putting on the annual Aldeburgh Festival. Their closest companions formed an enduring core over the years that was of great personal importance to both men. They had their own individual friends, but their most regular holiday companions and, at times, housemates were friends of them both. For the most part, it is striking that many of these friends were heterosexual couples and ‘conventional’ family units, although their circle did embrace gay friends Colin Graham, William Plomer, and Basil Coleman. The couples they both worked and holidayed with included John and Myfanwy Piper, Erwin and Sofie Stein – parents of Marion Stein, later Lady Harewood – and the flamboyant Russian couple Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya. This chapter introduces these close companions, among many others, and the extent to which they provided a nurturing and creatively stimulating circle of friends to Britten and Pears.