Deborah Warner’s 60th anniversary production of Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River will be broadcast on BBC Four on 17 November. The 71-minute work, the first of Britten’s church parables, was performed at the 75th edition of the Aldeburgh Festival at Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh in June 2024. The film is directed by Dominic Best.
The production, which starred Ian Bostridge as the Madwoman, received a flurry of five-star reviews from critics when it debuted this summer.
…a production of such blazing intensity that I emerged into the midsummer twilight feeling shocked, purged and uplifted all at once…perfectly realised here.
The Times (Richard Morrison), 24 June 2024 *****
The glowing white walls caught in the evening sunlight and the carved wooden angels above cast a spell, even before a note had sounded…Compassion flooded the drama, just as the sunlight flooded the church.
The Telegraph (Ivan Hewett), 23 June 2024 *****
…incredibly affecting…This was certainly an evening to reinforce the view that Curlew River itself constitutes a minor musical miracle.
The Guardian (Rian Evans), 24 June 2024 *****
Deeply moving staging of a visionary musical ritual…the elements of ceremony and mystery, of austerity and simplicity, are deeply entrenched… the effect is of a congregation-wide transformation.
The Stage (Edward Bhesania), 24 June 2024*****
The cast also includes Willard White as the Abbott, Duncan Rock as the Ferryman, and Marcus Farnsworth as the Traveller. Audrey Hyland directed instrumentalists drawn from the Britten-Pears Young Artist programme.
Curlew River (1964) is the story of a woman stricken by grief who searches for her missing son. Scored for flute, horn, viola, double bass, harp, percussion, and organ, as well as a male chorus and boy treble, the 71-minute drama represented an experimental advance in Britten’s compositional technique, using short, decorative figures in solo instruments whose free repetitions are superimposed to create dynamic, unsynchronised layers.
The ‘Church Parable’ form – culminating in the creation of The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968) – brought Noh theatre into dialogue with medieval Miracle Plays, English choral music traditions, and Britten’s attachment to the landscape of East Anglia – the titular curlew being a common sight on the marshes and reedbeds around the river Alde. In turn they would inspire Jonathan Harvey’s Passion and Resurrection (1981), a drama situated on the border between ritual and theatre, founded on liturgical texts and making extensive use of plainchant call-and-response.
Warner has previously created celebrated stagings of Britten’s Death in Venice (for English National Opera in 2013) and the late cantata Phaedra, which will be revived in the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Ballet and Opera in February 2025 as part of the double-bill Phaedra + Minotaur with choreographer Kim Brandstrup.