Edward Gardner - Death in Venice - BLU-RAY

• Deborah Warner's universally acclaimed 2007 productio, filmed and recorded live at ENO in 2013 • Britten's final masterpiece, based on the famous Thomas Mann novella • Stunning central performance by John Graham-Hall as Aeschenbach • Edward Gardner, long-standing champion of Britten's music, conducts the ENO chorus and orchestra • (Gardner's) reading combines finesse and and nuance with dynamism, and makes for a magical performance...Inch - The Guardian • Available on Ble-ray and DVD

Adapted from Thomas Mann's 1912 novella, Death in Venice was Benjamin Britten's last opera, the composer insisting on it's completion while delaying badly needed heart surgery. The starkly simple narrative of a famous but failing novelist travelling to Venice to seek inspiration only to find unhealthy infatuation and deadly cholera, is given a chamber-like precision and clarity through Britten's score, becoming a haunting drama filled with musical symbols, disquieting mystery and richly evocative atmospheres of Venice and it's strange characters. Willy Decker's Teatro Real production was described as 'one of his most brilliant stage works... a remarkable technical feat.'

Adapted from Thomas Mann's 1912 novella, Death in Venice was Benjamin Britten's last opera, the composer insisting on it's completion while delaying badly needed heart surgery. The starkly simple narrative of a famous but failing novelist travelling to Venice to seek inspiration only to find unhealthy infatuation and deadly cholera, is given a chamber-like precision and clarity through Britten's score, becoming a haunting drama filled with musical symbols, disquieting mystery and richly evocative atmospheres of Venice and it's strange characters. Willy Decker's Teatro Real production was described as 'one of his most brilliant stage works... a remarkable technical feat.'