A Dinner Engagement (1954) de Lennox Berkeley : un opéra-bouffe anachronique ?

Commissioned by The English Opera Group, written on a libretto by Paul Dehn and created at the Aldeburgh Festival on 17 June 1954, A Dinner Engagement is a comic opera by Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989). The instrumentation follows that of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring. As r...

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Main Author: Jean-Philippe Heberlé
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses universitaires de Rennes 2014-10-01
Series:Revue LISA
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/6461
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author Jean-Philippe Heberlé
author_facet Jean-Philippe Heberlé
author_sort Jean-Philippe Heberlé
collection DOAJ
description Commissioned by The English Opera Group, written on a libretto by Paul Dehn and created at the Aldeburgh Festival on 17 June 1954, A Dinner Engagement is a comic opera by Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989). The instrumentation follows that of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring. As regards Albert Herring, it served to a certain extent as a model for Berkeley’s opera as is illustrated by the way the text was set to music, by the use of the repetition of musical motifs, etc. A Dinner Engagement’s musical language is essentially tonal and the structure of the work is akin to a number opera. Musically speaking, the opera of the British composer is closer to some operas by Britten, Menotti and Poulenc than to works by Berg, Schoenberg and the composers of the European avant-garde of the 1960s. The musical tensions between vernacular and extra-vernacular elements foreground the difficulty of defining what an English opera is, most particularly at a time when Benjamin Britten tried to renew English opera.
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spelling doaj-art-17bc8a88826b407c8b5c79f9b4b768592025-08-20T02:46:21ZengPresses universitaires de RennesRevue LISA1762-61532014-10-011210.4000/lisa.6461A Dinner Engagement (1954) de Lennox Berkeley : un opéra-bouffe anachronique ?Jean-Philippe HeberléCommissioned by The English Opera Group, written on a libretto by Paul Dehn and created at the Aldeburgh Festival on 17 June 1954, A Dinner Engagement is a comic opera by Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989). The instrumentation follows that of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring. As regards Albert Herring, it served to a certain extent as a model for Berkeley’s opera as is illustrated by the way the text was set to music, by the use of the repetition of musical motifs, etc. A Dinner Engagement’s musical language is essentially tonal and the structure of the work is akin to a number opera. Musically speaking, the opera of the British composer is closer to some operas by Britten, Menotti and Poulenc than to works by Berg, Schoenberg and the composers of the European avant-garde of the 1960s. The musical tensions between vernacular and extra-vernacular elements foreground the difficulty of defining what an English opera is, most particularly at a time when Benjamin Britten tried to renew English opera.https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/6461operapasticheEnglish operacomedypostmodernismparody
spellingShingle Jean-Philippe Heberlé
A Dinner Engagement (1954) de Lennox Berkeley : un opéra-bouffe anachronique ?
Revue LISA
opera
pastiche
English opera
comedy
postmodernism
parody
title A Dinner Engagement (1954) de Lennox Berkeley : un opéra-bouffe anachronique ?
title_full A Dinner Engagement (1954) de Lennox Berkeley : un opéra-bouffe anachronique ?
title_fullStr A Dinner Engagement (1954) de Lennox Berkeley : un opéra-bouffe anachronique ?
title_full_unstemmed A Dinner Engagement (1954) de Lennox Berkeley : un opéra-bouffe anachronique ?
title_short A Dinner Engagement (1954) de Lennox Berkeley : un opéra-bouffe anachronique ?
title_sort dinner engagement 1954 de lennox berkeley un opera bouffe anachronique
topic opera
pastiche
English opera
comedy
postmodernism
parody
url https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/6461
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