Four years ago, the BBC found it no easy job getting Benjamin Britten to accept a commission for a TV opera. He was still unhappy about the 1952 NBC Opera production of his Billy Budd, and remained skeptical about the compatibility of TV and opera. But accept Britten did, and began looking for a story that would show individuals reacting to each other and events of a "personal, private kind, rather than big and public, which a big stage obviously needs."
In Henry James' short story Owen Wingrave, he found what he was looking for. On the surface it is a preposterous...
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