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‘Darling Kath’: ’s Music for

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Alexandra Morag Mathew ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1796-3714

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Music (Musicology)

May 2018

Melbourne Conservatorium of Music Faculty of Fine Arts and Music

The University of Melbourne

ii

Title Page Image: Kathleen Ferrier and Benjamin Britten in Amsterdam, in Paul Campion, Ferrier: A Career Recorded (: Thames, 2005) 87.

‘Darling Kath’

DECLARATION

This is to certify that:

(i) the thesis comprises only my original work toward the Masters except where indicated in the Acknowledgements, (ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) the thesis is 48,976 words in length, inclusive of footnotes, but exclusive of bibliography.

Signature:

Name in Full: Alexandra Morag Mathew

Date: 8 May 2018

i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the many people who helped in the completion of this thesis.

Foremost, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Dr Suzanne Robinson, without whose support, guidance, patience, dedication and expertise I would not have been able to complete this thesis. Thank you.

I would also like to thank the following people for their support: Professor Kerry Murphy, for her expert counsel; Associate Professor Linda Kouvaras and Professor Jane Davidson, for academic guidance; Christine Webster and Sam at the Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Library; Dr Nicholas Clark, Judith Ratcliffe, and the staff at the Britten-Pears Archive; Caroline Wilkinson at the Kathleen Ferrier Archive, Museum and Art Gallery; the staff at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; the British Library Music and Manuscripts staff; Dr Paul Kildea, for offering invaluable insights on navigating Benjamin Britten scholarship; Dr Katherine Firth, for sharing knowledge and expertise on Hedli Anderson, W.H. Auden and the Group Theatre; Professor Ian Donaldson, for advice on Herrick literature; Dr , for the discussion on Kathleen Ferrier; Dr Jonathan Wallis, for recommending literature on ; the Faculty Small Grant Scheme; for providing funds to undertake archival research in the UK; Dr Rachel Landgren; Myriam Arbouz; Xin Ying Ch’ng; Sarah Kirby; Dr Julia Lai Kwon; my teacher Anna Connolly, for advice on writing about singing; Sara Hodson and Simon Surtees, for housing, feeding and watering me on my trips to London; Barbara Burrell, for sharing memories of friendships with Britten, Pears, and E.M. Forster; Imogen Mathew and Rob Mathew, for moral support; the residents of B61, for sharing with me the highs and lows of thesis life; Tom Hoskins at Readings at the State Library, for not grumbling when I worked on my thesis during quiet shifts; my colleagues at Readings in Carlton, for their support and friendship; Hugh Fullarton, for conversations about music and Britten; Dr Damien Powell, for advice on postgraduate research; last but not least, my mother Rosemary Metz, for tea, sympathy and proofreading.

ii ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the career of Kathleen Ferrier (1912–1953), and her collaborations with composer Benjamin Britten (1913–1976). In the late 1940s, Kathleen Ferrier was among the most famous classical singers of her day. Britten was the pre- eminent composer in Britain, composing solos for Ferrier in three major works: the title role in (1946), the contralto solos in (1949), and the part of Isaac in Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac (1952). Although their collaboration ceased with Ferrier’s untimely death, Britten’s work with Ferrier was musically and personally significant, and proved influential for the course of Britten’s career and for shaping Ferrier’s legacy. Drawing on diaries, correspondence, and recordings, this thesis examines Britten’s intricate understanding of Ferrier’s voice and ability, the unusual way in which he exploited them, and how Ferrier in turn interpreted and created the premiere performances. In addition, with reference to the writings of J.P.E. Harper-Scott and Carolyn Abbate, this thesis evaluates the nature of the relationship between an influential male composer and the woman who gives voice to a work or role, to address the vexed question whether it is the composer or interpreter who creates that role.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration ...... i

Acknowledgements ...... ii

Abstract ...... iii

List of Musical Examples ...... v

List of Illustrations ...... vii

Introduction ...... 1

Part I ...... 15 Chapter 1: Contextualising the Contralto Voice ...... 16

Part II ...... 37 Chapter 2: Ferrier’s Repertoire and Critical Reception ...... 38

Part III ...... 58 Chapter 3: An Extraordinary Lucretia: Kathleen Ferrier’s Role in The Rape of Lucretia ...... 59 Chapter 4: ‘Her Beautiful Dark Voice’: Solos in Spring Symphony ...... 85 Chapter 5: Isaac’s ‘Boyish Nonchalance’ in Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac .. 105

Conclusion ...... 123

Bibliography ...... 127

iv LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES

Example 1: , ‘O rest in the Lord’, from , 1846, bars 1–3...... 26 Example 2: Elgar, ‘Sea Slumber ’, , 1899, bars 10–11...... 28 Example 3: Christopher Wilibald Gluck, ‘Che faró senza ’, , Vienna version of 1762, bars 454–63...... 42 Example 4: Georg Frederick Handel, ‘He was despised’, , bars 19–21...... 44 Example 5: , ‘Auf Wegen die von weichen Grasse schwellen’, Das von der Erde, 1908, vocal score arr. Erwin Stein, 1942, 32...... 50 Example 6: , Poème de L’amour et de la mer, vocal score, op. 19, 1892, fig. 16...... 52 Example 7: Gluck, ‘Io son pure’, ‘Che faró senza Euridice’, Orfeo ed Euridice, bars 20–29. .... 54 Example 8: Benjamin Britten, ‘Take them away, I tell you!’, The Rape of Lucretia: An in Two Acts, fig. 69...... 73 Example 9: Britten, ‘Flowers bring to ev’ry year the same perfection’, Rape of Lucretia, fig. 75...... 76 Example 10: Britten, ‘Last night Tarquinius ravished me’, Rape of Lucretia, bar before fig. 87...... 77 Example 11: Britten, ‘Now I’ll be forever chaste’, Rape of Lucretia, bar before fig. 94...... 78 Example 12: Britten, ‘Washes my shame away’, Rape of Lucretia, six bars after fig. 94...... 79 Example 13: , ‘Der Frühling will kommen’, Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, 1828, bars 318–323...... 89 Example 14: Benjamin Britten, ‘Welcome Maids of Honour’, Spring Symphony, 1949, bars 4– 7...... 91 Example 15: Britten, ‘Welcome Maids of Honour’, Spring Symphony, bars 29–32...... 92 Example 16: Britten, ‘Welcome Maids of Honour’, Spring Symphony, bars 36–39...... 93 Example 17: Britten, ‘Out on the lawn’, Spring Symphony, bars 5–8...... 100 Example 18: Britten, ‘What violence is done’, ‘Out on the lawn’, Spring Symphony, bars 44– 50...... 102 Example 19: Benjamin Britten, ‘Abraham’, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, for Alto, and Piano, opus 51, 1952, bars 1–2...... 116 Example 20: Britten, ‘I will that so it be’, Abraham and Isaac, bar 6...... 117 Example 21: Britten, line, Abraham and Isaac, bars 20–24...... 118 Example 22: Britten, ‘Father, I am all ready’, Abraham and Isaac, bars 30–33...... 118 Example 23: , ‘Abendempfindung’, 1787, bars 1-4...... 119

v Example 24: Britten, ‘I see that I shall die’, Abraham and Isaac, bars 241–245...... 120

vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: Domenico Mustafà (1829–1912), photographed in 1898, in Feldman, The , Figure 8...... 17 Figure 2: Moreschi (1858–1922), in Franca Trinchieri Camiz, ‘The Castrato Singer: From Formal to Informal Portraiture’, Artibus et Historiae 9, no. 18 (1988): 177...... 18 Figure 3: Anton Maria Zanetti, caricature of Bernacchi, 1735, in Feldman, The Castrato, Figure 13...... 19 Figure 4: ‘Portrait of Gaetano Guadagni (1725–1792)’, image courtesy of the Handel and Hendrix House Museum, London...... 21 Figure 5: , Kathleen Ferrier, and Benjamin Britten posing for a press photo, 1952, bromide print, National Portrait Gallery, accessed 4 April 2018, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw161744/Peter-Pears- Kathleen-Ferrier-Benjamin-Britten...... 34 Figure 6: Kathleen Ferrier with , , circa 1947, in Vivien Schweitzer, ‘A Voice that Embraced a Nation’, New York Times, 6 July 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/arts/music/kathleen-ferrier-and-her- centennial-cd.html...... 48 Figure 7: Kathleen Ferrier as Orfeo and Veronica Dunne as , Royal Opera, 1953, in Mel Clarke, ‘On Song’, Times, 14 February 2016, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/on-song-3wj25x96525...... 56 Figure 8: Kathleen Ferrier as Lucretia, Anna Pollak as Bianca, and Margaret Ritchie as Lucia, ‘Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn’, Les Films de la Memoire, accessed 16 April 2018, http://lesfilmsx.cluster014.ovh.net/wordpress/en/kathleen- ferrier/...... 80 Figure 9: Christine Rice as Lucretia and Duncan Rock as Tarquinius, photograph by David Cooper, Telegraph, 6 July 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/glyndebourne/11716565/The-Rape-of- Lucretia-Glyndebourne-review-piercingly-intelligent-immaculately-realised.html...... 83

vii INTRODUCTION

The much-loved English contralto Kathleen Ferrier (1912–1953) is the subject of a one- woman show currently touring the UK. Created by and starring contralto Lucy Stevens, the show—titled Whattalife!—draws material from Ferrier’s letters and diaries, and intersperses it with excerpts from for which Ferrier is best known.1 Stevens’s show is directed at fans of nostalgic music, and mid-century wartime nostalgia in general. In one scene, she wears an apron and sips tea as she recites Ferrier’s account of preparing for her first Messiah performance. By portraying her subject as an ordinary housewife, Stevens highlights Ferrier’s comparatively extraordinary singing achievements. Yet the image of Ferrier as ’s answer to wartime singer is a misrepresentation. On several counts Whattalife! distorts Ferrier’s career and achievements: it includes simpler, better- known music from early in her career, such as Handel’s Messiah and Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, but seems to overlook Ferrier’s success performing works by composers such as Mahler and Chausson, and twentieth-century English composers such as Benjamin Britten, and Lennox Berkeley. The show also fails to capture Ferrier’s youth: rather than being a matronly homemaker, she was only forty-one when she died, which makes her international success and enduring fame all the more impressive.

Not just a popular entertainer, Kathleen Ferrier was one of the most remarkable British singers of the twentieth century. Although her career spanned little more than a decade, she quickly achieved international recognition. Such was her success that in 1953 she was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the new Queen’s first honours list, and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society.2 The September 2003 edition of Gramophone commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of Ferrier’s death and featured her image on the cover; and around the time of her centenary, , Telegraph, and Guardian all published articles celebrating Ferrier.3 As evidence of her iconic status, sixty-five years after her death Ferrier’s many recordings are still in circulation.

1 Lucy Stevens, Kathleen Ferrier Whattalife!, accessed 7 March 2018, https://kathleenferrierwhattalife.com. 2 The Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal is ‘the Society’s highest honour and is awarded for the most outstanding musicianship and is presented to the finest musicians of any nationality’. Benjamin Britten was the recipient in 1964. Royal Philharmonic Society, accessed 7 March 2018, https://royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/awards/gold_medal. 3 See Martin Cullingford, ‘Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow’, Gramophone (September 2013) 29; Vivien Schweitzer, ‘A Voice That Embraced a Nation’, New York Times, 6 July 2012, 7; Rupert Christiansen, ‘Kathleen Ferrier: Consoling Angel and the Nation’s Darling’, Telegraph, 17 January 2012,

1 Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) composed three important pieces of music for Ferrier: the role of Lucretia in The Rape of Lucretia (1946); the alto solos in Spring Symphony (1949); and the role of Isaac in Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac (1952). Britten first heard Ferrier in her professional debut, singing the alto solos in Handel’s Messiah at in May 1943 alongside Britten’s partner, tenor Peter Pears (1910–1986). Britten then composed the title role in The Rape of Lucretia for Ferrier even though she had no previous stage experience. In 1946 she was still unknown outside Britain. Three years later in 1949, at the time of the Spring Symphony premiere in Holland, Ferrier had begun to achieve international fame and recognition. By 1952 she, like Britten, was a household name in the UK. She had also been diagnosed with breast cancer, to which she eventually succumbed the following year. Britten’s final composition for Ferrier—Canticle II—was dedicated to the ailing singer and made allowances for her physically weakened state. Not only was Ferrier a colleague, she was a dear friend. In a letter of condolence to Ferrier’s sister Britten lamented,

There is no need to say how much we loved and admired darling Kath, how we treasured her friendship, and were honoured and proud to work with her and for her. It is unbelievable that she is no longer with us, and that we shall never hear that glorious voice again. But it will be a very long time before the memory of countless lovely concerts fade, and I myself will never forget, selfishly, her incomparable Lucretia or Abraham and Isaac. They were written for her, and in the future one will only hear pale copies.4

That emotional declaration is one of many souvenirs of Britten’s deep and genuine regard for Ferrier’s art, voice, and personality.

In his Aspen Award acceptance speech (1964), Britten explained, ‘I certainly write music for human beings—directly and deliberately. I consider their voices, the range, the power, the subtlety, and the colour potentialities with them’.5 That statement, though written a decade after Ferrier’s death, is relevant to Britten’s compositions for her. Scholarly discussion of those works has previously focussed almost exclusively on Britten, and Ferrier’s input, if mentioned at all, is a side note. In Rethinking Britten, for example, Ferrier is mentioned only once, where she is described as a ‘co-creator’ of the role of Lucretia.6 Many acknowledge how important Ferrier’s work was in relation to Britten’s, without

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/9019989/Kathleen-Ferrier-Consoling-angel-and-the- nations-darling.html; Tom Service, ‘Kathleen Ferrier: Remembering One True Voice’, Guardian, 12 April 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2012/apr/12/kathleen-ferrier. 4 Benjamin Britten to Winifred Ferrier, 11 October 1953, in Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, revised and enlarged edition, ed. Christopher Fifield (Woodbridge, : Boydell Press, 2011) 433. 5 Benjamin Britten, On Receiving the First Aspen Award (London: & Faber, 1977) 10. 6 Paul Kildea, ‘On Ambiguity in Britten’, in Rethinking Britten, ed. Philip Rupprecht (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) 10.

2 understanding why. However, Britten’s music for Ferrier was carefully tailored to the unique qualities of her voice, and merits mention in analyses of that music. Her performances of Britten’s compositions were well received, and she was often singled out for her beautiful singing and moving interpretation. Britten’s music encouraged her to tackle more and different repertoire to what she usually performed: her repertoire diversified to include not just folk songs and , but the orchestral songs of Mahler and some opera. A hard worker with a background as a pianist, Ferrier rose to the challenge.

Ferrier did not just sing Britten’s music; she provided a unique instrument that informed Britten’s vocal writing, to which she literally gave voice in performance. Carolyn Abbate argues that

No single (and, in opera, all-knowing) composer’s voice sings what we hear. Rather, the music seemingly has other sources; it strongly encourages listeners to split the sonorous fabric into multiple originating speakers … The locus of creation is not, in short, simply shifted from the composer to the performer; rather, the fact of live performance encourages its relocation to other places.7

This study attempts to shift the emphasis away from Britten’s score and instead to place an emphasis on the capacities of Ferrier’s voice and her individual contribution to of Britten’s music. Abbate does not simply want to know ‘which singers are singing at the performance’ but how we ‘conceive the origins of the sonorities—verbal and musical—that we are hearing’.8 In relation to Britten’s music for Ferrier, this study aims to address the second question by focussing on Ferrier’s performances of Britten’s compositions for her.

Unlike Abbate’s discussion, which examines the performance of the title role in ’s (1905), this study does not merely look at a long-dead composer and a distant performance of his work by an unnamed singer, but a then-living composer and the performer for whom the role was specifically written.9 Abbate further argues for opera’s capacity to subvert male authority, explaining ‘given the traditional [i.e. male] assignments of power and creative force in our culture, this envoicing seems especially subversive when character and singer are female’.10 In Britten’s music, Ferrier portrayed a female (Lucretia), a male (Isaac), and a genderless soloist (alto in Spring Symphony). She used her voice in each to different effect, and Britten reflected different qualities of her voice in the individual

7 Carolyn Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, in Musicology and Difference, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993) 235. 8 Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, 235. 9 Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, 235. 10 Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, 256.

3 scores, as per his musical objectives. On stage, Ferrier did not simply perform Britten’s music, she interpreted his notes and contributed the individual resonances of her voice to both the score and the performance. In that sense the performance was a collaboration.

LITERATURE REVIEW There is very little academic writing on Ferrier. As a popular figure, she has been the subject of a number of biographies, and her letters and diaries have been published in Christopher Fifield’s edited volume, Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier (2003), a revised and enlarged edition of which was published in 2011.11 Every extant letter that she wrote has been published in this book, with the addition of letters written on her behalf when she herself was too ill to write, condolence letters and tributes written after her death, and a chapter of correspondence from the BBC. However, the book includes scant correspondence to Ferrier.12 Furthermore, while Fifield provides comprehensive biographical notes on the singer, he provides little in the way of analysis. For example, he has transcribed Ferrier’s appointment diaries, which is useful for finding out where Ferrier was on what date, but he has not made clear which events Ferrier crossed out when she was ill, or, subsequent to a cancellation, what she organised on a given day. The diary transcriptions, while detailed, are missing the layers and nuances evident in the original diaries, held at the Kathleen Ferrier Archive in the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery.

Neville Cardus’s edited volume, Kathleen Ferrier: A Memoir (1954), includes reminiscences from Benjamin Britten, Bruno Walter, and , and from Ferrier’s singing teacher, .13 Britten’s contribution in particular is useful to this study, because he writes in some detail about his work with Ferrier. In Ferrier: A Career Recorded (1992), a revised edition of which was published in 2005 for the 50th Kathleen Ferrier Awards, Paul Campion lists chronologically all the recordings Ferrier made during her career, including those either unreleased or destroyed.14 He provides some analysis and criticism of Ferrier’s voice, and includes some reception, which is a useful starting point for evaluating how a recording was received at the time.

Of the biographies published, Winifred Ferrier’s and Maurice Leonard’s are useful for several reasons. Winifred Ferrier’s biography, The Life of Kathleen Ferrier (1955), published soon after the singer’s death, is a more intimate and at times protective portrait of her

11 Fifield ed., Letters and Diaries. 12 Including such letters from friends, family, and colleagues would provide greater understanding of Ferrier’s professional life. 13 ed., Kathleen Ferrier: A Memoir (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1954). 14 Paul Campion, Ferrier: A Career Recorded, revised edition (London: Thames, 2005).

4 sister. 15 While Winifred gives fascinating personal insights into the singer’s life— particularly her early life—she censored other parts, such as some letters, in order to protect her sister’s legacy. Two more biographies were published shortly following Ferrier’s death: Charles Rigby’s Kathleen Ferrier: A Biography (1955) (the subject of controversy because Rigby published copyright material without permission), and Peter Lethbridge’s brief Kathleen Ferrier (1959).16 Leonard’s more recent biography, Kathleen: The Life of Kathleen Ferrier 1912–1953 (1988) provides a comprehensive survey of Ferrier’s life, career and achievements.17 In 2001 published a short biography of Ferrier in Granta. Jack ponders Ferrier’s sexuality, and emphasises her appetites for food, alcohol, and cigarettes.18 The BBC documentary Kathleen Ferrier: An Ordinary Diva (2004) features interviews with many who knew Ferrier, including her sister Winifred, John and Evelyn Barbirolli, Britten, and Veronica Dunne.19

Much more has been written on Britten than on Ferrier. John Evans’s edited volume of Britten’s boyhood diaries, Journeying Boy: The Diaries of the Young Benjamin Britten 1928– 1938 (2009), while not covering the years that Britten worked with Ferrier, provides insight into Britten’s earliest years as a composer, and the evolution of his creative process.20 The first four published volumes of Britten’s letters and diaries, Letters From a Life (1991–2008), are invaluable resources, including correspondence to Britten as well as from him, and some press reviews.21 For example, volume 4 (which looks at Britten’s life between the 1952 and 1957) reproduces material relating to the composition and premiere performances of Canticle II, including some press notices, information on the premiere, and correspondence.22

There are a number of biographies of Britten. Beth Britten’s My Brother Benjamin (1986), like Winifred Ferrier’s biography of her sister, is a more intimate portrait of the composer, and includes some lovely personal insights into Britten’s work with Ferrier.23 Because Beth is the only authoritative biographer to have known Britten all his life, her anecdotes are

15 Winifred Ferrier, Kathleen Ferrier: Her Life (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955). 16 Charles Rigby, Kathleen Ferrier: A Biography (London: Hale, 1955); and Peter Lethbridge, Kathleen Ferrier (London: Cassell, 1959). 17 Maurice Leonard, Kathleen: The Life of Kathleen Ferrier (London: Hutchinson, 1988). 18 Ian Jack, ‘Klever Kaff’, Granta 76 (Winter 2001): 87–132. 19 Kathleen Ferrier: An Ordinary Diva, directed by Suzanne Phillips (Decca, 2004), in Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings: Centenary Edition, recorded February 1945 to September 1952 (Decca 4783589, 2012) 14 compact discs, 1 digital video disc. See also Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn, directed by Diane Perelsztejn (Decca 0440 074 3479 6, 2012), 1 digital video disc, 1 compact disc. 20 John Evans, ed, Journeying Boy: The Diaries of the Young Benjamin Britten 1928–1938 (London: Faber & Faber, 2009). 21 Donald Mitchell, et al., Letters From a Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, 1913–1976, volumes 1 to 4 (London: Faber, 1991–2008). 22 Philip Reed ed., Letters From a Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, 1952–1957, volume 4 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008). 23 Beth Britten, My Brother Benjamin (Abbotsbrook, Bourne End, Buckinghamshire: Kensal Press, 1986) 189.

5 unique amongst the other biographies. Humphrey Carpenter’s Benjamin Britten: A Biography (1992) was the first of its kind, although some of his work, such as the emphasis on the supposed origins of Britten’s sexuality, is out-dated and has been superseded.24 Paul Kildea’s recent Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century (2013) provides one of the most comprehensive background studies on the composer.25 Kildea’s book is a useful reference point, although he pays little attention to Ferrier. Instead, as with other scholars, Kildea focuses more on the music than on the performer.

There was a spate of new Britten publications for the 2013 Britten centenary. These included John Bridcut’s Essential Britten (2012), Neil Powell’s Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music (2013), David Matthews’s Britten (2013), and Britten’s Century (2013).26 More recent publications include Beyond Britten: The Composer and the Community (2015), My Beloved Man: The Letters of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears (2016), and Britten Studies: Essays on an Inexplicit Art (2017).27 Those publications merely ask (if at all), ‘which singers are singing at the performance?’ and do not address the most penetrating of Abbate’s questions: ‘how do we conceive the origins of the sonorities’ of a performance of those works?28 Ferrier is rarely mentioned, and if she is she is simply noted as a performer at a premiere.29 Conversely, in 1981 when Michael Kennedy published Britten, he noted that the role of Lucretia had been written for Ferrier, and he generally emphasised her importance. At that time Ferrier had been dead not yet thirty years, which may account for her presence in

24 Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London: Faber & Faber, 1992). 25 Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 2013). 26 John Bridcut, Essential Britten (London: Faber & Faber, 2012); Neil Powell, Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music (London: Hutchinson, 2013); David Matthews, Britten (London: Haus, 2013); and Nicholas Kenyon and Mark Bostridge eds., Britten’s Century: Celebrating 100 Years of Britten (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 27 Peter Wiegold and Ghislaine Kenyon, eds., Beyond Britten: The Composer in the Community (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015); Vicki P. Stroeher, Nicholas Clark and Jude Brimmer, eds., My Beloved Man: The Letters of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016) and Vicki P. Stroeher and Justin Vickers, eds., Britten Studies: Essays on an Inexplicit Art (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017). 28 Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, 235. 29 For example, while John Bridcut states that Ferrier ‘created the title role in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia’, he writes that she simply ‘sang in the premiere of his Spring Symphony’ and ‘performed the part of Isaac’ in Canticle II. See Bridcut, Essential Britten, 111. In Beyond Britten: The Composer in the Community, Gillian Moore discusses the truly international nature of the Festival, writing, ‘but what Britten created at Aldeburgh was a sense of rootedness in a community balanced with a global artistic ambition, as he included the work of the greatest artists of international standing with whom he also had personal relationships, including Shostakovich, Rostropovich, Kathleen Ferrier, and Fischer-Dieskau’. The latter three were all musicians for whom he composed music. Note that Ferrier is the only one of those artists who is referred to by first name as well as surname, suggesting that she is either less important or less well known than the others. Gillian Moore, ‘A Vigorous Unbroken Tradition: British Composers and the Community since the Beginning of the Twentieth Century’, Beyond Britten, 55-56.

6 Kennedy’s book.30 Now, more than sixty years after her death, her contribution to Britten’s music has been written out of Britten scholarship.

A number of books, some published during his lifetime, have examined specific aspects of Britten’s music, such as the influence of Purcell. Benjamin Britten: A Commentary on His Works by a Group of Specialists (1952), published just before Britten’s fortieth birthday, was the first book, examining in detail various aspects of Britten’s compositions to date.31 In Britten (1981) Michael Kennedy dedicates several pages to Rape of Lucretia, Canticle II and Spring Symphony. The Britten Companion (1984) is one of the first volumes to look at Purcell’s influence on Britten’s , among other aspects of his work.32 Peter Evans writes about The Rape of Lucretia, Canticle II and Spring Symphony in The Music of Benjamin Britten (1989), but unlike Kennedy he only mentions Ferrier once, in reference to Charm of Lullabies, composed for Nancy Evans.33 The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (1999), with chapters contributed by eminent Britten scholars, examines in depth many aspects of Britten’s compositional output. 34 Donald Mitchell’s contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, ‘Violent Climates’ (1999), looks at the influence of Britten’s pacifism on his music, which is relevant to the three pieces Britten composed for Ferrier, as violence permeates each of the works in some way.35 Yet Ferrier’s role is omitted from Mitchell’s discussion of Spring Symphony and The Rape of Lucretia. In Rethinking Britten (2013), published for the Britten centenary, eminent scholars again contributed chapters on specific areas of Britten research.36 However, Rethinking Britten does not examine the performers or performances of Britten’s compositions, preferring to emphasise the scores and, often, their socio-political context.

A number of scholars have written specifically about the works examined in this thesis. In 1948 the creators of The Rape of Lucretia produced a book on the opera, which included the libretto, sketches of set and costume designs, and contributions from Britten, Ronald Duncan (librettist), (director), and John Piper (designer), providing unique

30 Michael Kennedy, Britten (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981). In an article Kennedy writes of meeting her: ‘meeting her I was entranced by her beauty, her speaking voice (mellow, with no trace of ), and her friendliness’. Michael Kennedy, ‘The Unforgettable Ferrier’, Spectator, 14 April 2012, https://www.spectator.co.uk/2012/04/the-unforgettable-ferrier/. 31 Donald Mitchell, ed., Benjamin Britten: A Commentary on His Works by a Group of Specialists (London: Rockliff, 1952). 32 Christopher Palmer, ed., Britten Companion (London: Faber, 1984). 33 Nancy Evans (1915–2000) was a British mezzo- who was cast as the alternate Lucretia in the original production of The Rape of Lucretia. Britten also composed the role of Nancy for her in . See Peter Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1989) 355. 34 Mervyn Cooke, ed., Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 35 Donald Mitchell, ‘Violent Climates’, in The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, 118–216. 36 Philip Rupprecht, ed., Rethinking Britten (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

7 insights into the conception of the opera.37 Ronald Duncan’s memoir, Working With Britten (1981), provides an account of his collaboration with Britten on the opera.38 Margaret Stover Mertz’s PhD thesis, ‘History, Criticism and the Sources of Britten’s Opera The Rape of Lucretia’ (1990), is the first comprehensive background study of the opera, and examines source material on which the opera is based.39 Eric Walter White in Benjamin Britten: His Life and (1983) and Claire Seymour in The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion (2007) both provide in-depth musical analysis of The Rape of Lucretia.40 Xin Ying Ch’ng, postgraduate researcher at the University of , is completing a PhD thesis on Ferrier, Peter Pears, and Deller, and how their voices represented Englishness in the music of Britten, with particular reference to The Rape of Lucretia.41 While her thesis is still in progress, she has generously provided a conference paper on The Rape of Lucretia. J.P.E. Harper-Scott’s article ‘Britten’s Opera about Rape’ (2009) is one of the more recent analyses of The Rape of Lucretia.42 Harper-Scott argues that Britten’s treatment of female characters is one-dimensional, and he also questions the value of using the Lucretia story as the basis of an opera. Harper-Scott’s analysis ignores Ferrier: she is not mentioned once in the article. Subsequently, Harper-Scott also contributed a chapter to Rethinking Britten entitled ‘Post-war Women in Britten’, in which he looks at Britten’s characterisation of Lucretia.43 Again, he omits Ferrier completely from his discussion of the opera.

Less has been written on Spring Symphony and Canticle II. In 1950 Lennox Berkeley wrote an extended review of Spring Symphony, in which he discussed aspects of the work in detail, and contemplated the ideal setting for a performance (not the , apparently).44 Also in 1950 Erwin Stein wrote the first comprehensive musical analysis of Spring Symphony.45 Although both Berkeley and Stein discuss the unusual text settings and vocal writing in the work, neither mention Ferrier nor any other of the premiere

37 Benjamin Britten et al., The Rape of Lucretia: A Symposium (London: Bodley Head, 1948). 38 Ronald Duncan, Working with Britten: A Personal Memoir (Bideford, Devon: Rebel Press, 1981). Considering Duncan’s friendship and working relationship with Britten soured, his recollections and reminiscences may be unreliable. 39 Margaret Stover Mertz, ‘History, Criticism and the Sources of Britten’s Opera The Rape of Lucretia’, PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1990. 40 Eric Walter White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); and Claire Seymour, The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007). 41 Xin Ying Ch’ng, ‘Kathleen Ferrier’s Voice and Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia’, Royal Music Association Research Students’ Conference, University of Southampton, 3–5 January 2013. 42 J.P.E. Harper-Scott, ‘Britten’s Opera about Rape’, Cambridge Opera Journal 21, no. 1 (2010): 65–88. 43 J.P.E. Harper-Scott, ‘Post-war Women in Britten’, in Rethinking Britten, 87–101. 44 Lennox Berkeley, ‘Britten’s Spring Symphony’, Music & Letters 31, no. 3 (July 1950): 216–19. 45 Erwin Stein, ‘Britten’s Spring Symphony’, 15 (Spring 1950): 19–24.

8 performers. Almost thirty years later, John Wells Jennings’s thesis, ‘The Influence of W.H. Auden on Benjamin Britten’ (1979) includes a chapter on ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’, which provides analyses of both Auden’s poem and Britten’s music.46 He describes Spring Symphony as ‘written for soprano, alto and tenor soli’ rather than naming specific soloists.47 Niall O’Loughlin’s 2012 conference paper, ‘The Sea and the Spring: Links with Nature Between Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten’, looks at links between Britten’s Spring Symphony and Bridge’s Enter Spring, and includes useful discussion of other ‘spring’-themed music.48 O’Loughlin makes no mention of Ferrier or any of the other Spring Symphony soloists.

Graham Johnson, who writes about Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac in his book Britten, Voice and Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten (2003), similarly ignores Ferrier’s importance in the conception of the role of Isaac.49 In Britten’s Century pianist Roger Vignoles contributes a chapter on Britten’s five , which looks at the set as a whole.50 Ferrier’s name is not mentioned in reference to Canticle II; rather, Vignoles is concerned with demonstrating how the canticles can be seen as markers of Britten’s compositional evolution. Medieval literature scholar Allen J. Frantzen’s article ‘Tears for Abraham: The Chester Play of Abraham and Isaac and Antisacrifice in Works by Wilfred Owen, Benjamin Britten, and Derek Jarman’ argues that Britten sympathised more with Abraham than Isaac, without taking into consideration the conditions in which Britten composed the work, or the effect of Ferrier’s illness.51 In addition, there are a number of theses on the canticles, including Gordon Samuel’s ‘Benjamin Britten’s Canticles I, II and III: A Structural and Stylistic Analysis’, and Elizabeth Barrett Scott’s ‘The Canticles of Benjamin Britten’.52 Scott’s thesis provides structural analysis of text and music, and examines the spiritual influences underpinning each of the five canticles. She describes the

46 John Wells Jennings, ‘The Influence of W.H. Auden on Benjamin Britten’, DMA thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1979. 47 Jennings, ‘The Influence of WH Auden’, 181. 48 Niall O’Loughlin, ‘The Sea and the Spring: Links with Nature between Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten’, conference paper, Ljuljana Festival, Slovenia (12–15 March 2012), http://www.ljubljanafestival.si/file/2013/02/42_sgd%20zbornik.pdf. 49 Graham Johnson, Britten, Voice and Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten, ed. George Odam (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). 50 Roger Vignoles, ‘A Dancer before God: Britten’s Five Canticles’, in Britten’s Century, 132–143. 51 Allen J. Frantzen, ‘Tears for Abraham: The Chester Play of Abraham and Isaac and Antisacrifice in Works by Wilfred Owen, Benjamin Britten, and Derek Jarman’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 445–76. 52 Gordon Samuel, ‘Benjamin Britten’s Canticles I, II and III: A Structural and Stylistic Analysis’, PhD thesis, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1974; and Elizabeth Barrett Scott, ‘The Canticles of Benjamin Britten’, DMA thesis, McGill University, 1983.

9 canticle as ‘dedicated to the singers Kathleen Ferrier and Peter Pears, who, with Britten as pianist, gave its first performance’.53

Among the most important texts exploring the social and political context of Britten’s music for Ferrier are Alexandra Harris’s book Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper (2010), Tim Barringer’s article ‘‘I am Native, Rooted Here’: Benjamin Britten, Samuel Palmer, and the Neo-Romantic Pastoral’ (2011), and Heather Wiebe’s book Britten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory In Postwar Reconstruction (2012).54 Harris examines British art and culture between the wars, and argues for an artistic movement which she refers to as ‘romantic modernism’: British artists taking inspiration from their homeland and its history. Likewise, Barringer argues for similar British sensibilities—such as a ‘sensitivity to the traditions of the picturesque and to the literary and historical associations of the English countryside’—in Britten’s 1940s music.55 He describes that music as ‘embedded at the core of a cultural matrix extending beyond music and text into the realm of the image’.56 While many scholars are concerned solely with Britten’s music, Wiebe examines the role Britten’s music played in British post- war reconstruction. Considering Ferrier worked with Britten directly following the war, the perspectives of Harris, Barringer and Wiebe are essential when considering external influencing factors on The Rape of Lucretia, Spring Symphony, and Canticle II.

METHODOLOGY This thesis firstly draws on archival materials, such as original press cuttings books, diaries, and letters, sourced from a number of significant archives in the UK. The Britten–Pears Archive in Aldeburgh holds correspondence, composition drafts, and a chronologically ordered, comprehensive collection of press reviews from premiere performances of Britten’s compositions in the UK, Holland, and the US. The archive also holds the books Britten used when setting texts, and these books contain his original markings. While they do not necessarily present any further information on the works themselves, it is useful to see them first hand, and to discover what exactly Britten used and discarded in particular poems.

The Kathleen Ferrier Archive at the Blackburn Museum is a similarly valuable resource. It holds (among other items) six original press cuttings books. The first cuttings book,

53 Scott, ‘The Canticles of Benjamin Britten’, 47. 54 Alexandra Harris, Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2010); and Heather Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 55 Tim Barringer, ‘‘I Am Native, Rooted Here’: Benjamin Britten, Samuel Palmer, and the Neo-Romantic Pastoral’, Art History 31, no. 1 (February 2011): 127. 56 Barringer, ‘I Am Native, Rooted Here’, 165.

10 inscribed ‘Kath Ferrier’, was likely her sister’s or her own, and holds cuttings from concerts, recitals, and competitions between 1928 and 1943. It seems that Ferrier subscribed to Durrant’s press cutting service, which provided many of the reviews and notices in the books. At least two of the books were compiled by friends or fans of Ferrier, and those books include tributes and obituaries following her death. Ferrier’s diaries are also kept in the Blackburn archive, and these reveal more than is evident in Fifield’s edited version.

Of primary sources held elsewhere, the BBC Written Archives in Caversham holds several files on Ferrier, some of which has been published in the revised edition of Fifield’s book. Confidential material, such as contracts, internal memos, and correspondence give a more comprehensive picture of Ferrier than is presented in the literature. Other useful archives holding many sources include the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, which holds the Spring Symphony composition draft, and the British Library Sound Archive, which holds a number of relevant oral histories, such as ’s ‘Glyndebourne Oral History Project’, which includes an interview with Eric Crozier and Nancy Evans. 57 The composition drafts, while not necessarily revealing anything new, indicate where Britten edited particular phrases as he composed for Ferrier. For example, while Britten’s compositional drafts appear to be mostly without corrections, it is possible to see where he wrote, erased, and then rewrote a particular phrase.

The study of the direct influence of a particular singer on the composition of vocal music is a recent trend in music scholarship, and there are a number of relevant models for this thesis. Jane Glover’s 2006 book Mozart's Women is a good example of a book that looks in detail at the influences of specific voices on vocal music.58 Robert Strauss’s DMA thesis ‘The Five Song Cycles for Voice and Piano by Benjamin Britten Written Specifically for Peter Pears’ (2006), discusses the way Britten used the idiosyncrasies of Pears’s voice to express text and meaning. 59 Susan Rutherford’s book Verdi, Women, Opera (2013) similarly emphasises the importance of the singers who ‘realised’ a character, and the experience of the female audience.60 Those writing about Britten and tenor Peter Pears often comment on the specific influence of Pears’s unusual voice and Britten’s exploitation of that voice. Often quoted is Britten’s letter to Pears (1974) in which he writes ‘What have I done to deserve

57 Alan Blyth, Nancy Evans and Eric Crozier, ‘Glyndebourne Oral History Project’ (1992) C511/41, British Library Sound Archive (hereafter cited as BLSA). 58 Jane Glover, Mozart’s Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music (New York: Harper Collins, 2006). 59 Robert Strauss, ‘The Five Song Cycles for Voice and Piano by Benjamin Britten Written Specifically for Peter Pears’, DMA thesis, West Virginia University, 2006. 60 Susan Rutherford, Verdi, Women, Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 22.

11 such an artist and man to write for?’.61 Pears responds, ‘I am here as your mouthpiece and I live in your music’.62 The collected edition of Britten and Pears’s correspondence, My Beloved Man: The Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears (2016), while not specifically dealing with Britten’s writing for Pears, is a great insight into a working relationship between two creators: the composer and the singer for whom a work was composed. Arnold Whittall writes about Pears’s influence on—and collaborations with— Britten in his chapter ‘Composer–Performer Collaborations in the Long Twentieth Century’ in Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music (2017).63 He refers to their ‘archetypal example’, and argues that If one definition of a great composer involves the ability to work with and for outstanding performers without losing any of the creative independence and distinctive personality their work embodies, this leads to the unsurprising conclusion that the most rewarding and interesting collaborations will be with performers who enhance what is most worthwhile about the composer in question—and just possibly help to bring out and develop qualities that were only latent before the collaborative encounter began.64 Whittall questions whether reflecting a singer’s unique voice in the score can be considered a true collaboration, whereas this thesis regards that voice as an essential element in the conception and creation of Britten’s work.

In order to analyse the contralto and Ferrier’s voice, and the way Britten used that voice, this thesis draws on a number of books and theses on women’s voices in opera. In ‘Through Voices, History’ (2000), Catherine Clément classifies voice types in opera, which provides a framework for understanding meanings encoded within a voice type, and is applicable to Britten’s operatic writing for Ferrier.65 Caroline Abbate’s chapter ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’ (1993) considers the female authorial voice in opera, and debates whether it is the singer who creates a work during performance or the composer as he writes the score.66 Naomi André’s work on low-voiced female singers—including her PhD

61 Benjamin Britten, letter to Peter Pears, 17 November 1974, in My Beloved Man: The Letters of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, ed. Vicki P. Stroeher, Nicholas Clark and Jude Brimmer (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016) 357. 62 Peter Pears, letter to Benjamin Britten, 21 November 1974, My Beloved Man, 358. 63 Arnold Whittall, ‘Composer-Performer Collaborations in the Long Twentieth Century’, Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017): 21–36. 64 Whittall, ‘Composer-Performer Collaborations’, 26. 65 Catherine Clément, ‘Through Voices, History’, in Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000) 17–28. See also Catherine Clément, Opera, or, The Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (London: Tauris, 1997). 66 Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’. See also Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991); and Edward T. Cone, The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).

12 thesis ‘Azucena, Eboli and Amneris: Verdi’s Writing for Women’s Lower Voices’ (1996), and article ‘Veiled Messages and Encoded Meanings: Exoticism, Verdi, and Women’s Lower Voices’ (2000)—are suitable models for the discussion of Ferrier’s voice type in her performances of operatic roles.67 André’s book, Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti and the Second Woman in Early-Nineteenth-Century , is a valuable source for considering the crossover between a castrato or singing the role of a male, or a woman singing that role.68 André examines the origins of the ‘pants role’ tradition, and considers what an audience member sees and hears when a woman sings the role of a man. Similarly, Wendy Bashant, in ‘Singing in Greek Drag: Gluck, Berlioz, George Eliot’, writes about women-as-men in opera, with particular reference to the title character in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice—the second of Ferrier’s two operatic roles.69

This thesis also analyses Ferrier’s recordings as evidence of her technical development and skill. In the Cambridge Companion to Recorded Sound Nicholas Cook sets out methods for analysing recordings.70 He writes that ‘recordings are a largely untapped resource for the writing of music history, the focus of which has up to now been largely on scores’.71 Ferrier’s recordings are compared to recordings of other singers—both recent and old—and her voice is analysed from a singer’s perspective. It is what Eric Clarke refers to as an ‘ecological approach to music perception’ and listening.72 The recordings are not considered ‘aural snapshots’ of Ferrier’s performances, but—in the absence of videos and live performances—examples of her abilities and limitations.73

This thesis analyses Britten’s scores—taking into consideration the range of Ferrier’s voice, the of the vocal line, and the effect of particular vowels on different notes— to determine how Britten composed Ferrier’s vocal line and set text for her. The score analysis draws on the work of Eric Walter White, Claire Seymour, Michael Kennedy, and Donald Mitchell. I examine the scores (and recordings) through the prism of my experience as a classical singer.

67 Naomi André, ‘Azucena, Eboli and Amneris: Verdi’s Writing for Women’s Lower Voices’, PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1996; and Naomi André, ‘Veiled Messages and Encoded Meanings: Exoticism, Verdi, and Women’s Lower Voices’, Ars Lyrica 11 (2000): 1–22. 68 Naomi André, Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti and the Second Woman in Early-Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 69 Wendy Bashant, ‘Singing in Greek Drag: Gluck, Berlioz, George Eliot’, in En Travesti: Women, Gender, Subversion, Opera, ed. Corinne E. Blackmer and Patricia Juliana Smith (New York: Press, 1995) 216–241. 70 Nicholas Cook, ‘Methods for Analysing Recordings’, in Cambridge Companion to Recorded Sound, ed. Nicholas Cook et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 221–45. 71 Cook, ‘Methods for Analysing Recordings’, 221. 72 Eric Clarke, Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 48. 73 Cook, ‘Methods for Analysing Recordings’, 243.

13 Additionally, reception of both Ferrier’s performances and recordings will be examined in order to assess her performances. Reception includes reviews and press notices, sourced from the Kathleen Ferrier and Britten-Pears archives, online databases such as ProQuest Historical Newspapers, and from books such as Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier and Letters From a Life. Of interest are the terms reviewers used to describe Ferrier, such as ‘noble’ and ‘dignified’, and the way the reception informed Ferrier’s public image, Britten’s perception of her, and her legacy. Also considered is Ferrier’s hierarchy within a review, such as whether she was mentioned first or last, whether the review was about her or about the overall performance, and whether she was assigned a ranking alongside other singers or musicians in that performance.

PLAN AND OUTLINE: This thesis is divided into three parts. Part I contextualises Ferrier’s voice type by looking back through the history of the castrato, and examining the subsequent emergence of the contralto. It will show that Ferrier’s career was clearly influenced by the castrato and contralto singers that preceded her. Part II examines Ferrier’s repertoire choices, recordings, and reception aside from the music composed for her by Britten. Looking at folk songs, Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice, Handel’s oratorio Messiah, and music by Mahler and Chausson, Part II charts the progression of Ferrier’s career and the development of her vocal technique and language skills. Part III, divided into three sections, examines in detail Ferrier’s three collaborations with Benjamin Britten, providing detailed assessment of Ferrier’s recordings of The Rape of Lucretia and Spring Symphony. In the absence of a recording of Canticle II, Ferrier’s performance of this work is evaluated through critical reception and Britten’s own account of the collaboration. Part III investigates how and why Britten’s music and text settings for Ferrier were so unusual. Further, Part III draws thematic, textual, and musical links between the three compositions, demonstrating Britten’s specific use, exploitation, and intricate understanding of Ferrier’s personality and instrument. Finally the conclusion addresses the distortions of the current state of Ferrier’s legacy, and presents an assessment of the extent and significance of her work with Britten.

14

PART I

15 Chapter 1

Contextualizing the Contralto Voice: The Emergence of the English Contralto From the Italian Castrato Tradition

CASTRATO The ‘castrato’ tradition—the practice of castrating prepubescent males in order to preserve their naturally high singing voices—began in Italy. The first documented castrati appeared in 1550–60 in Rome and , and it was in the church that the castrato tradition flourished.1 In accordance with the teachings of Saint Paul, who said ‘Mulier taceat in ecclesia’ (‘Let women be silent in church’), female voices were prohibited in the church until well into the seventeenth century. 2 Instead of women, boys (trebles), falsettists (), or castrati sang the high vocal parts.3 Records show that in 1589 the first castrato to sing at the Sistine Chapel was not an Italian but a Spaniard—Hernando Bustamente—although the majority of castrati were native Italians.4 Compared to castrati, the ‘falsettists’ were ‘unsatisfying’, particularly when singing the higher vocal lines.5 However, countertenors—taking the lower alto lines—continued to sing alongside the castrati, who were generally considered superior singers and musicians.6 The best castrati, according to written accounts, possessed voices of ‘uncommon brilliance allied with power, a wide range, a breathing capacity beyond the reach of most normal voices, and sometimes an unearthly ’.7

1 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Castrato’, by John Rosselli, accessed 24 November 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. 2 1 Corinthians 14:34–35, New International Version, Bible; and Angus Heriot, The Castrati in Opera (Da Capo Press: London, 1975) 9. 3 John Rosselli, Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 34. 4 Feldman, The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds (California: University of California Press, 2015) 6. 5 Rosselli, ‘Castrato’. 6 Rosselli, ‘Castrato’. 7 Rosselli, ‘Castrato’.

16 CONSEQUENCES OF CASTRATION There were physical and aural consequences of castration.8 Physical consequences included limbs growing to be longer than average, a larger ribcage, irregularly extended facial features such as the jaw, deposits of fat around the chest, neck, stomach and thighs, and little to no facial hair.9 Further, the development of the sexual organ was stunted, compared to non-castrated men.10 Aural consequences included strong, high voices, which developed uninterrupted by puberty. The thought of those unusual characteristics conjure images of an altogether more ‘feminine’ man, or, in Naomi André’s words, the castrato ‘embodied the trinity—man, woman and child … and reinterpreted the codes for how gender was articulated by juxtaposing features from men, women, and children in the same throat’.11

Figure 1: Domenico Mustafà (1829–1912), photographed in 1898, in Feldman, The Castrato, Figure 8.

8 Naomi André, Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early-Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006) 28. 9 Feldman, Castrato, 10–11. 10 Patrick Barbier, The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon, trans. Margaret Crosland (London: Souvenir Press, 1996) 13. 11 Patrick Barbier, quoted in André, Voicing Gender, 31.

17

The only pictorial souvenirs of these physically altered adult men include photos of the last castrati, Domenico Mustafà, (1829–1912) (Figure 1) and Alessandro Moreschi (1858– 1922) (Figure 2), and portraits and caricatures, such as those by Anton Maria Zanetti (1706–1778) (Figure 3).12 With their ‘feminized bodies’ and ‘fleshy softness’, the most successful among the gender-ambiguous castrati were worshipped by fans, and gained supernatural or angelic status. For modern audiences it seems unusual that castrati sang heroic male roles, but, when the phenomenon spread beyond the church, that became their precise function. While castration is not a natural state for a man, his high voice is the natural result of that particular state, much like the way a woman’s high voice is the natural result of her physiological makeup. Conversely, a countertenor’s high voice is, perhaps somewhat controversially, an affectation.13 It is not a natural extension of his speaking voice, or his vocal anatomy. By that reckoning, the contralto becomes closer in nature and sound to the castrato, whereas the countertenor remains in an exclusive category of his own.

Figure 2: Alessandro Moreschi (1858–1922), in Franca Trinchieri Camiz, ‘The Castrato Singer: From Formal to Informal Portraiture’, Artibus et Historiae 9, no. 18 (1988): 177.

12 J.J. Quantz, quoted in Ellen T. Harris, Grove Book of Opera Singers, ed. Stanley Sadie and Laura Williams Macy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 151; and Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Farinelli [Broschi, Carlo; Farinello]’, by Ellen T. Harris, accessed 20 November 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. 13 Suzanne Cusick argues that, at the onset of puberty, boys ‘abandon the registers that he might share with young girls when he accepts his new access to registers called Tenor and Bass that would perform his identity as a man’. Conversely, perhaps a countertenor chooses to maintain the register that he shares with young girls and, later, women. See Suzanne Cusick, ‘On Musical Performances of Gender and Sex’, in Audible Traces: Gender, Identity, and Music, edited by Elaine Barkin and Lydia Hamessley (Zurich: Carciofoli, 1999) 32.

18 By the turn of the eighteenth century there were a number of famous castrati, including Carlo Broschi (1705–1782), known as ‘Farinelli’, and Gaetano Guadagni (1728–1792). Farinelli and Guadagni represented opposite ends of the castrato spectrum. Farinelli possessed a ‘penetrating, full, rich, bright and well-modulated soprano voice’.14 His range extended from A3 to D6, and, with remarkable agility, was capable of impressive trills, melismas, and ornamentation. Guadagni, on the other hand, was famous for his command of ‘pathetic’ singing: ‘soft, laden with emotion’, and ‘powered by controlled devices such as messa di voce’.15 Such was their success that they could command huge fees—in some cases equal to the prime minister’s salary—and many also held permanent positions within the royal chapel or the cathedral.16

Figure 3: Anton Maria Zanetti, caricature of Bernacchi, 1735, in Feldman, The Castrato, Figure 13.

14 Harris, ‘Farinelli’; and Rosselli, ‘Castrato’. 15 Rosselli, ‘Castrato’. 16 Rosselli, ‘Castrato’.

19 Throughout his career Guadagni was muse to many composers. Aged only eighteen, he travelled from Cremona to Padua, where he was employed as an alto at the Basilica of Sant’Antonio di Padova, and later at the Teatro San Moisé opera house in Venice. In 1748– 49, aged twenty, he moved to London to sing at the Haymarket Theatre. There he caught the attention of Handel, who rewrote for Guadagni the alto solos in the Messiah and , and composed the part of Didymus in (1750).17 Although, in Messiah, Handel originally composed the alto solos for Susanna Cibber (who performed at the premiere on 13 April 1742), in 1750 he rewrote for Guadagni ‘But who may abide?’ and ‘Thou art gone up on high’.18 Handel inscribed these ‘For Guadagni’, and that standard version of Messiah is referred to as the Guadagni setting.19 John Christopher Smith—who worked as Handel’s amanuensis—composed for Guadagni the role of Lysander in his opera The Fairies, which premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in February 1755.20

However, Guadagni is best known for creating the role of Orfeo in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). Orfeo was the first of Gluck’s ‘reform’ operas, ‘in which a noble simplicity in the action and the music was intended to replace the complicated plots and florid musical style of opera seria’.21 Guadagni’s voice played a ‘vital role’ in shaping the aesthetics of the operatic reform in the eighteenth century. In London, Guadagni trained with the actor David Garrick, and his dramatic portrayals were considered ‘deeply affecting’.22 English composer, musician and historian Charles Burney (1726–1814) considered Guadagni to be without equal on the stage, and described his figure as ‘uncommonly elegant and noble; his countenance replete with beauty, intelligence, and dignity; his attitudes and gestures so full of grace and propriety’. 23 Burney was apparently disappointed with what they first heard, but finally in the straightforwardness of his style ‘he proved the inherent power of melody divorced from harmony, and unassisted even by unisonous accompaniment’.24

Most books and articles on Guadagni rely on Burney’s descriptions as evidence of the singer’s talent. Patricia Howard found this reliance on Burney problematic when looking for

17 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Gaetano (Cosimo) Guadagni’, by Gerhard Croll and Irene Brandenburg, accessed 20 November 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. 18 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Cibber [née Arne], Susanna Maria’, by Molly Donnelly, accessed 24 November 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au; Donald Burrows, Handel: Messiah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 37; Peter Jacobi, The Messiah Book: The Life & Times of G.F. Handel’s Greatest Hit (St Martin’s Press: New York, 1982) 68. 19 Richard Luckett, Handel’s Messiah: A Celebration (Victor Gollancz Ltd: London, 1992) 225. 20 Lowell Lindgren, ‘Handel’s London—Italian Musicians and Librettists’, The Cambridge Companion to Handel, ed. Donald Burrows (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 84. 21 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Orfeo ed Euridice (i)’, by Jeremy Hayes, accessed 24 November 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. 22 Rosselli, ‘Castrato’. 23 Charles Burney, quoted in Croll and Brandenburg, ‘Gaetano Guadagni’. 24 Burney, quoted in Croll and Brandenburg, ‘Gaetano Guadagni’.

20 evidence of Guadagni’s dramatic and theatrical skills, but concluded that he was, nonetheless, ‘the iconic actor of the reform, working at the forefront of a new style of acting that renewed opera in the later 18th century’.25 Using Burney’s recollections as a basis, scholars and writers have attempted to draw a more detailed picture of the singer. Amber Youell concludes that Guadagni’s particular aesthetic ‘functioned as an ideal incarnation of changing ideals of pathos, heroism and… sympathy’, and he was known and respected for his ‘intelligent approach to a role, the simplicity of his art and his deference towards the creator of a work, an attitude very rare at the time’.26

This image is under copyright.

Figure 4: ‘Portrait of Gaetano Guadagni (1725–1792)’, image courtesy of the Handel and Hendrix House Museum, London.

Not only was Guadagni an apparently intelligent musician and impressive singer, he was, by all accounts, ‘handsome’, and ‘without those bodily defects that are usually seen in

25 Patricia Howard, ‘No Equal on Any Stage in Europe: Guadagni as Actor’, Musical Times 151 (Spring, 2010): 9 and 21. 26 Amber Youell, ‘Opera at the Crossroads of Tradition and Reform in Gluck’s Vienna’, PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2012, 150; and Patrick Barbier, The World of the Castrati: the History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon, trans. Margaret Crosland (London: Souvenir Press, 1996) 182.

21 ’.27 However, there is at least one portrait of the singer, and that portrait conforms to the previously described ‘bodily defects’ of castrati: he appears to have a long torso and arms, a fatty girth, and a youthfully hairless face (Figure 4). His feminized appearance would have been unlikely to detract from his popular appeal: according to Patricia Howard, author of The Modern Castrato: Gaetano Guadagni and the Coming of a New Operatic Age, in the eighteenth century both men and women preferred their idols to be hairless Apollos, rather than rugged Hercules.28 Roger Freitas argues that the act of castration preserved ‘the boy’s charms, his beautiful face and voice’, apparently rendering him even more attractive to women than his ‘intact’ counterpart.29 Further, the youthfully high—‘boyish’— sound of the castrato voice ‘carried erotic associations’, and his singing ‘tied him to the realm of effeminate sensuality’.30

Yet, despite Guadagni’s fame and success in London, eighteenth-century English audiences gradually came to prefer (women), rather than castrati, in these heroic male roles. A similar trend began to occur in Europe, and Naomi André argues that while ‘the sound of the castrato voice was desired, the sight of the castrato on the opera stage had fallen out of vogue’. 31 She further explains that the remedy for this issue was to have women—contraltos—singing the castrato roles, which was apparently common throughout the eighteenth century.32 Women ‘continued to portray female characters’, and as they increasingly portrayed male characters, ‘at the beginning of the nineteenth century women’s voices ended up being the sound par excellence for both the hero and the heroine’.33

CONTRALTO Carolyn Abbate describes how the main male operatic protagonist ‘has mutated from male (Monteverdi’s ) to a voice that oscillates between signifying male and female (the castrato), becoming today a male image taken over by a female body and a female voice’.34 That ‘female voice’, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was the contralto. The contralto is a rare voice type—one that has all but disappeared—and little has been written

27 Gennari, Notizie giornaliere di quanto avvene specialmente in Padova, ii. 683; quoted in Patricia Howard, The Modern Castrato: Gaetano Guadagni and the Coming of a New Operatic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 37. 28 Howard, The Modern Castrato, 36. 29 Roger Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 128. 30 Freitas, Portrait of a Castrato, 129. 31 André, Voicing Gender, 89. 32 See also Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999) 177. 33 André, Voicing Gender, 89. 34 Carolyn Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, in Musicology and Difference, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993) 258.

22 on the topic compared to the amount of literature on the soprano. 35 The contralto voice is defined as having a range from G3 to G5–A5. The voice must also carry well in the low to middle parts of its range. It differs from the soprano voice which, while it possesses the low notes, is unable to similarly project in that part of the voice. The tone of the contralto voice is often described as dark and warm.

The origins of the contralto voice can be traced to the Italian and German castrato and, to a degree, the English countertenor. The first edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1900) gave a comprehensive definition and description of the voice type, and made the fascinating claim that, at the time, ‘the culture and employment as a solo instrument, of the female contralto voice, like that of its correlative, the bass, is comparatively modern and even yet not universal’. 36 The Grove entry also interestingly argued that it was to Rossini ‘that this voice type owes its present very important status’. 37 Grove briefly mapped the state and history of the contralto voice type up until the turn of the century, mere decades before it reached its peak in the mid-twentieth century and, after which it subsequently declined.

Kathleen Ferrier was one of the last in the line of a number of so-called famous ‘true’ English contraltos, including (1872–1936), Ada Crossley (1871–1929), and Charlotte Sainton-Dolby (1821–1885). Each were more famous for singing oratorio than for their operatic roles. Phyllis Brenner, author of one of the few theses on contraltos, argues that the English choral tradition played an enormous role in the development of the contralto voice, whereas Betty O’Brien, whose Masters thesis examined the life of Australian contralto Ada Crossley, views the voice type as a naturally occurring phenomenon in only a handful of women throughout history. 38 O’Brien references several sources that give a definition of the contralto voice, and lists music composed for the contralto. Brenner, on the other hand, attempts to locate how this low female voice emerged in throughout the centuries. Neither deeply explore the possibility that in some cases the contralto voice type could be cultivated rather than born, or that, in its gender neutrality, it might have developed as a result of a gap left by castrati.

35 See Betty Teresa O’Brien, ‘Australian Contralto Ada Crossley (1871–1929): A Critical Biography’, PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2010; Phyllis Ann Brenner, ‘The Emergence of the English Contralto’, Doctor of Education thesis, Columbia University Teachers College, 1989; Nancy Kinsey Totten, ‘The English Victorian Drawing-Room Ballad: A Product of its Time’, PhD thesis, Indiana University, 1997. 36 Sir George Grove, ‘Contralto’, in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: MacMillan and Co., 1890) 395–96. 37 Grove, ‘Contralto’, 395–96. 38 Brenner, ‘English Contralto’, 6.

23 In 1712, when Handel arrived in London, castrati were gaining greater prominence in England, although it was not the preferred voice type amongst the English. Unlike Italian audiences, English audiences felt that castrato singers lacked musicianship, and around 1740–1750 there was a shift towards contraltos, which, according to Brenner, came as much from necessity as it did from shifting tastes. In rural areas, countertenors (who in church music sang the alto part) were less and less numerable. Further, the ‘effeminate’ sound of the castrato or countertenor was seen as less desirable, and many preferred men to sing with a ‘male’ voice. Countertenors were perceived as un-masculine and asexual.39

In London, Handel began employing a number of low-voiced female singers for his operas and , including Anastasia Robinson (1692–1755), Jane Barbier (birthdate unknown–1757), and Susannah Maria Cibber (1714–1766), sister of the composer (1710–1778). 40 Cibber was, in terms of this thesis, the most important singer of the three, particularly because it was for her that Handel transposed alto solos in the Messiah, including ‘He shall feed his flock’, and it was she who performed in the Dublin premiere of the oratorio.41 Cibber’s moving performance of ‘He was despised’ was often remarked upon. According to one account, an audience member declared, ‘Woman, for this, be all thy sins forgiven’, and to another, ‘it was not to any extraordinary powers of voice … that she showed her excellence, but to expression only’. 42 Charles Burney praised Cibber’s performance as the most ‘truly touching’ he had heard and, despite the ‘mere thread’ of her sound and her ‘inconsiderable’ knowledge of music, appreciated that ‘yet, by a natural pathos, and perfect conception of the words, she often penetrated the heart, when others, with infinitely greater skill, could only reach the ear’.43

Jonathan Rhodes Lee argues that part of Cibber’s professional success—and appeal to Handel—was her combination of sensibility and pathos, her talent as an actress.44 At this time in London, singing actresses ‘owned’ their parts, and were always associated with their respective roles.45 Cibber, whose reputation as innocent and chaste had been tarnished by her real-life sex scandal, was perhaps trying to resuscitate her onstage purity by way of

39 Brenner, ‘English Contralto’, 79. 40 Anastasia Robinson was a popular contralto in the mid-eighteenth century, for whom Handel composed a number of arias, Lotti composed the insert ‘Pur di Cesti’, and Bononcini composed the title role in his opera Griselda. Jane Barbier was one of the first English contralto singers to appear in a ‘travesti’ role, performing in Handel’s , Il pastor fido and Teseo. 41 Jacobi, The Messiah Book, 68; and Donnelly, ‘Cibber’. 42 Victor Schoelcher and Thomas Sheridan, quoted in Burrows, Handel: Messiah, 21. 43 Charles Burney, quoted in Jonathan Rhodes Lee, ‘From Amelia to Calista and Beyond: Sentimental Heroines, “Fallen” Women and Handel’s Oratorio Revisions for Susanna Cibber’, Cambridge Opera Journal 27, no. 1 (Cambridge University Press, 2015): 1–2. 44 Rhodes Lee, ‘From Amelia’, 2. 45 Rhodes Lee, ‘From Amelia’, 3.

24 Handel’s wholesome oratorio music.46 Handel went on to transpose and compose roles for Cibber in Deborah, Hercules, Saul, and Belshazzar.47 She is remembered as having a small soprano voice, although the majority of Handel’s music for her is in a low contralto register.

In the nineteenth century, Irish-born and Italian-trained composer and singer Michael Balfe (1808–1870) was the first English composer to create operatic roles for the contralto, such as the Queen of the Gypsies in The Bohemian Girl (1844) and Donna Agnes in The Sleeping Queen (1864). Both roles were for low-voiced female singers, rather than women en travesti.48 The tessitura for the Queen of Gypsies is, at some points, relatively high for a contralto, and as such her role is sometimes listed as ‘mezzo-soprano’ or even ‘soprano’. Balfe was the most successful English composer of opera in the nineteenth century, gaining widespread fame for The Bohemian Girl, and is often credited with the advancement of English opera.

Perhaps aiding Balfe’s fame—and encouraging his ability to compose for low-voiced female singers—was his collaboration with celebrated Italian mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran (1808–1836). The two met while performing in Rossini’s at the Théâtre des Italiens in ; Balfe as Dandini and Malibran as Cenerentola.49 Malibran apparently said to Balfe, ‘I will make you write me an English opera next year!’50 In 1836, Balfe composed the title role, Isoline, in The Maid of Artois for Malibran, to be performed at Drury Lane.51 Singer Henry Phillips, who also performed in the opera, recalled,

Malibran was undoubtedly the greatest singer that lived in my time. Her mind, her energy, her knowledge of languages, were surprising, and her register of voice amazing. She had the lower range of a contralto, with the highest compass of the soprano, and a conception of her subject truly wonderful. In fine, she was a prodigious genius, possessed of a marvelous power, and of an intellect that rarely falls to the lot of any human being. In the finale of this opera, her shake on the upper C was one of the most extraordinary vocal efforts I ever heard. She seemed to me resolved to outstrip all his competitors.52

The opera was a success, but soon after her London performances, Malibran died suddenly, aged only 28. Balfe’s association with one of the most famous singers of the day no doubt boosted his reputation and popularity both in England and on the Continent. However, in

46 Rhodes Lee, ‘From Amelia’, 5. 47 Donnelly, ‘Cibber’. 48 Brenner, ‘English Contralto’, 122–23. 49 Eric Walter White, A History of English Opera (London: Faber and Faber, 1983) 265. 50 Malibran, quoted in White, A History of English Opera, 266. 51 White, A History of English Opera, 268. 52 Henry Phillips, quoted in White, A History of English Opera, 269.

25 England, Balfe’s addition to the nineteenth-century contralto operatic repertoire remained unique.

The solo English contralto voice came fully into vogue in 1846 when Felix Mendelssohn composed the contralto solos in his oratorio Elijah. Mendelssohn dedicated Elijah and the English edition of his Six Songs (op. 57) to contralto Charlotte Sainton-Dolby.53 The first two bars of ‘O rest in the Lord’ (Example 1)—the best-known contralto aria in Elijah—are representative of the range and difficulty of the vocal line throughout, and demonstrate what is generally asked of the contralto voice.

Example 1: Felix Mendelssohn, ‘O rest in the Lord’, from Elijah, 1846, bars 1–3.

The range is contained within an octave, apart from the occasional D5. There is no , and a slow, steady rhythm is maintained throughout. The aria showcases a contralto’s lower range, and does not stretch the upper reaches of the voice.

Sainton-Dolby was the first contralto ‘star’. Mendelssohn, after a performance of Elijah, reportedly turned to the singer with tears in his eyes and said ‘Thank you from my heart, Miss Dolby’.54 Sainton-Dolby played an important role in advancing the contralto voice as we know it today: she was recognized as musically talented from an early age, and was ‘unrivalled in oratorio and ballad singing’.55 According to her obituary in the Musical Times,

Her English fame grew more and more till none could dispute her rank as premier contralto. How large a space Miss Dolby filled in general esteem thenceforward till her retirement in 1870 it is needless to indicate. In oratorio and English song she was indispensable on all

53 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Sainton-Dolby [née Dolby], Charlotte (Helen)’, by Nigel Burton and Sophie Fuller, accessed 26 November 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. 54 F.G. Edwards, The History of Mendelssohn’s Oratorio Elijah (London: Novello, and Ewer and Co., 1896) 123. 55 Brenner, ‘English Contralto’, 126.

26 important occasions; never was a singer more uniformly welcome, and never did an honoured artist bear success with greater dignity and lack of self-assertiveness.56

After she retired from the stage, Sainton-Dolby published A Tutor for English Singers, composed a number of cantatas, opened a vocal academy, and published a number of her own ballads and arrangements.57 Janet Patey (1842–1894) eventually replaced Sainton- Dolby as the leading contralto of the Victorian era.58

By the time of Dame Clara Butt (1872–1936), the contralto was possibly the most celebrated voice type in England. Butt’s popularity was widespread, and, according to her biographer Winifred Ponder, ‘it is certain that no singer within living memory—and, so far as we know, none in history—has ever captured the popular imagination and affection as they have been won and held by Clara Butt’.59 J.B. Steane considers Butt to stand ‘at the head of the list of contraltos’, and claims that ‘she, I fancy, had much to do with the high status of the contralto voice in that period, and equally, much to do with its subsequent demotion’.60 Butt apparently possessed a four-octave : she could reach the low notes required of her in the contralto repertoire and the high notes of an operatic mezzo- soprano.61 Not only was Butt nationally famous, she also toured and performed in North America, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Europe.62 At the turn of the century, one reviewer extolled that ‘to hear Madame Butt sing […] is to learn in a moment what a god- like gift the power of song is!’.63 Butt, ‘a large and imposing woman’ well over six foot and taller than her husband, stood out among her peers, literally and figuratively.64

Elgar composed the orchestral cycle Sea Pictures (1899) for Butt, which she premiered. While the vocal line is lyrical, there is no coloratura. Typically, contraltos possess heavy voices with little capacity for agility, and Elgar provided something appropriate. The

56 ‘Obituary’, Musical Times, 25, no. 505 (1 March 1885): 146. 57 Burton and Fuller, ‘Sainton-Dolby’. 58 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Patey [née Whytock], Janet’, by Jean Mary Allen, accessed 26 November 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. 59 Winifred Ponder, Clara Butt: Her Life Story (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1928) 17. 60 J.B. Steane, Voices: Singers and Critics (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1992) 47. 61 Boult, quoted in Sophie Fuller, ‘“The Finest Voice of the Century”: Clara Butt and Other Concert-Hall and Drawing Room Singers of Fin-De-Siècle Britain’, in The Arts of the Prima in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) 322; and Brenner, ‘English Contralto’, 145. 62 Such was Butt’s fame that her wedding to —attended by Ada Crossley, and Paolo Tosti among others—was covered by newspapers across England and Australia. Furthermore, press notices often included detailed descriptions of Butt’s outfits and the floral tributes with which she was presented after concerts and recitals. Fuller, ‘“The Finest Voice”’, 324. 63 Harold Simpson, quoted in Fuller, ‘“The Finest Voice”’, 322. 64 Fuller, ‘“The Finest Voice”’, 319.

27 contralto is often required to sing—and project over an —at the bottom of her range (Example 2).

Example 2: Elgar, ‘Sea Slumber Song’, Sea Pictures, 1899, bars 10–11.

Sea Pictures could be considered the first true vehicle to show off the power of the English contralto voice. A 1911 recording of Butt singing Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory (1902) reveals her tremendous low notes, which the composer highlighted in both pieces. By today’s standards her performance is astonishing. Few women can sing so low, and if they do it is without Butt’s strength. While the quality of Butt’s recordings is poor, the unusual quality of her true contralto is obvious. Her voice is, as Steane attests, ‘booming’.65 Occasional leaps from to her much lower register sound like yodelling. Sophie Fuller describes the depths of Butt’s voice as sounding ‘somewhat ambiguously gendered’.66 According to her obituary in the Townsville Daily Bulletin, Butt’s ‘contralto voice, possessing rare beauty and great power, was combined with a commanding stage presence, and brought her outstanding success. … She endeared herself in the hearts of concert-goers all the world over.67 Not only did Butt achieve international recognition, she also successfully bridged the amateur and professional music worlds.

Charlotte Sainton-Dolby, Clara Butt and Ada Crossley had much in common, including the repertoire that they sang and the genres in which they performed. They preferred oratorio to opera, and were popular amongst their audiences for their interpretations of ballads and folk songs. Much like their operatic soprano counterparts, they were feted by the media and gained international fame. Kathleen Ferrier’s path, it seems, did not stray far

65 Steane, Voices, 49. 66 Fuller, ‘“The Finest Voice”’, 321. 67 ‘Obituary’, Townsville Daily Bulletin, 25 January 1936, 7.

28 from her predecessors’. Butt was one of the most famous singers of Ferrier’s youth. The two contraltos were often compared to one another—something Ferrier always disliked, even if the review was in her favour. For example, one critic summarized the comparisons between the two singers, writing,

Dame Clara Butt, whom I heard twice at first hand, made a vast reputation by virtue of (a) a phenomenally powerful natural voice, (b) a striking and impressive stage presence and (c) a readiness to include very popular ballads in her programmes. …it was a big voice rather than a beautiful one; its masculinity … deprived it of charm. In my opinion Miss Ferrier is in every way a superior artist, and suffers from the comparison, if you can call it suffering, only in the matter of sheer amplitude of vocal sound.68

Like the castrati, Ferrier and Butt are linked by one common physical attribute that would no doubt have affected their voices—their noticeably tall height. 69 As with (uncastrated) men, a woman’s height corresponds with the length of her vocal folds, and the longer the folds the deeper the voice.70 At around six foot tall, the naturally occurring voice of each singer was much deeper than that of the average female singer. Their height also contributed to their ability to appear ‘masculine’ on stage when need be, and, subconsciously, would have contributed to a somewhat gender-ambiguous appearance when performing oratorio.

Despite Butt’s and Ferrier’s distinct physical attributes, their voices still had to be cultivated, more so in the case of Ferrier than Butt. Ferrier especially possessed the ability to sing high, and, with the correct training could easily have classified herself as ‘mezzo- soprano’. In a written report from the BBC archives following a 1944 performance of Messiah (relatively early in Ferrier’s career), Julian Herbage reported that ‘Kathleen Ferrier was excellent but I felt she is developing too much the contralto quality in her voice—she is really a mezzo-soprano’.71 Herbage’s comment is interesting for a number of reasons. First, as a musicologist, BBC assistant director and Messiah scholar, he would have heard many

68 ‘Her Speaking Voice Is Lovely Too’, Press and Journal, Aberdeen, 5 September 1950, clipping in Kathleen Ferrier Archive (hereafter cited as KFA). 69 Eric Myers, ‘Sweet and Low: The Case of the Vanishing Contralto’, Opera News, 1 January 1996, 18. Ferrier was apparently 5’ 10’’. Kathleen Ferrier: An Ordinary Diva, directed by Suzanne Phillips (Decca, 2004), DVD. 70 For information on the length of female singer’s vocal chords, see Nan Yan, Manwa L. Ng, Mok Ka Man, and Tsz Hin To, ‘Vocal Tract Dimensional Characteristics of Professional Male and Female Singers with Different Types of Singing Voices’, International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 15 (5): 489. See also Ben Barsties, Rudi Verfaillie, Peter Dicks, and Youri Maryn, ‘Is the Speaking Fundamental Frequency in Females Related to Body Height?’, Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology 41 (2016): 30; and ‘Sounding Tall’ press release, EurekAlert! (3 December 2013) https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-12/aiop-st112713.php. 71 Julian Herbage, ‘Messiah, Wednesday, December 27th’, letter to M.P.O. Music Booking Manager, 28 December 1944, Kathleen Ferrier Radio Contributor File, BBC Written Archives.

29 renderings of the alto solos, and would have had a great understanding of the different interpretations of the role. Second, his comment, unlike published press reviews, was not for public consumption, rather it was a confidential report intended to be used for the sole benefit of the BBC. He was able to openly express his honest response to Ferrier’s singing. At the time of Herbage’s remark, Ferrier was thirty-two and at the outset of her career. Due to her late start in her singing career, her vocal development was not as advanced as other professional singers of similar age, and it was not until later in her career that she began to fully access the higher reaches of her voice.

Few contemporary singers now identify themselves as contraltos. Without access to quality recordings it is difficult to fully assess the voices of Butt, Sainton-Dolby, and Crossley, or to comprehend their potential for mezzo-soprano singing. They too probably capitalized on their capacity for low singing, cultivating a contralto sound and eschewing the higher mezzo-soprano repertoire.72 J.B. Steane similarly concludes that, had Ferrier been born ‘a decade or so later … in all probability she would have been encouraged to think and practise ‘upwards’ in the tone-range, for by that time hardly anybody reckoned to be a contralto; they were all mezzos’.73

KATHLEEN FERRIER: BIOGRAPHY Kathleen Ferrier was born on 22 in Higher Walton, near Blackburn, Lancashire. Her father William was a talented singer, and Kathleen was noticeably musical from a young age.74 She was a bright child, able to read before starting school, and developed the ability to recite poetry from memory.75 A ‘tall sturdy girl’, while at school Ferrier was for a time a member of the choir, but due to her large and loud voice was asked to ‘be careful and to sing softly’.76 With the encouragement of her mother, Ferrier began piano lessons. She learnt quickly, and soon achieved recognition in local music competitions. Ferrier was also good at sports, and participated in school plays. Due to her height, she was often cast as a man, such as when she performed the role of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.77 Aged only fourteen she passed the final grade for the ABRSM piano exams.

72 Eric Myers disagrees, arguing that ‘the contralto voice cannot be acquired; it is God-given. … The deep, resonant, open-throated contralto sound is unique, as if it were being drawn up out of the earth. … The authentic contralto was always a rare bird’. Myers, ‘Sweet and Low’, 18. 73 J.B. Steane, Singers of the Century (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1996) 65. 74 Winifred Ferrier, Kathleen Ferrier: Her Life (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955) 14 & 21–23. 75 Ferrier, Kathleen Ferrier, 21–24. 76 Ferrier, Kathleen Ferrier, 22–24. 77 Maurice Leonard, Kathleen: The Life of Kathleen Ferrier: 1912–1953 (London: Hutchinson, 1988) 8.

30 That same year, in 1926, Ferrier left school because her parents could no longer afford the fees.78 She soon found a job at St John’s Telephone Exchange in Blackburn, first working in telegrams, and then as an operator. Ferrier involved herself in social activities, joining the Telephone Exchange tennis team and the James Street Congregational Choir. She still kept up her piano playing at home with friends and in local music competitions. In 1928 Ferrier entered the local area section of a national piano competition, winning an upright Cramer piano worth £250.79 She quickly garnered a reputation as a fine pianist and accompanist, and aged seventeen she began working with local singers as part of a comedy troupe, the ‘Sevilles’.80 One of the singers from the troupe gave Ferrier rudimentary singing lessons, and she was offered her first solo role: the mezzo-soprano part in the trio ‘Lift thine eyes’ from Mendelssohn’s Elijah. According to a report in the local paper, ‘Miss Ferrier sang pleasingly in the trio Lift Thine Eyes and more will be heard in Blackburn of this young vocalist’.81

In 1935 Ferrier married Albert Wilson, whom she had met two years before at a dance. The couple moved to , , where Wilson had been appointed bank manager. Here, Ferrier quickly involved herself in the local community, and she began giving piano lessons to local children.82 In 1937 her husband encouraged her to enter the voice section of the Festival competition. Ferrier entered and won two trophies (one for singing and one for piano), and the prize (a rose bowl) for best singer at the festival. Following her win Ferrier began to receive requests and engagements for local performances, including for Handel’s Messiah at the Brow Street Methodist Church, and, in 1938, for the contralto solo in Mendelssohn’s Elijah. That same year, Ferrier won first prize at the Festival, singing Vaughan Williams’s ‘Silent Noon’. The adjudicators praised her voice for its ‘true contralto texture’.83

In 1939 Wilson went off to war, and Ferrier moved in with her sister Winifred, allowing her to focus on her own life and career. Ferrier’s mother Alice had recently died, and so her father William moved in with the two sisters. Ferrier began singing lessons in earnest with teacher Dr. J.E. Hutchinson in Newcastle.84 Her technique and range improved and

78 Leonard, Kathleen, 10. 79 Leonard, Kathleen, 12. 80 Leonard, Kathleen, 16. 81 Anonymous review, quoted in Winifred Ferrier, Kathleen Ferrier, 31. 82 Leonard, Kathleen, 28. 83 Leonard, Kathleen, 33. 84 Dr. John Ernest Hutchinson was, according to Christopher Fifield, Ferrier’s third singing teacher. See Christopher Fifield, ed., Letters and Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier (Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2011) 449.

31 increased rapidly as she began to sing Handel and Bach.85 After Wilson left for war in 1939, Ferrier reverted to her maiden name. Although Ferrier and Wilson were no longer living as a couple, it was not until years later in 1947 that their marriage was annulled, which Ferrier described as the ‘releasing of a millstone round my neck’.86

In 1941, Ferrier successfully auditioned to work as a touring singer for the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA). On the advice of conductor Sir , with whom she performed the alto solos in Handel’s Messiah in 1942, Ferrier and her sister moved to London. Here she hoped to find more professional singing work. On 29 May 1942, Sargent invited Ferrier to audition for the agent John Tillett of , who accepted her as his client.87 In London Ferrier began lessons with the baritone and teacher Roy Henderson, Professor of Singing at the and one of the most sought after teachers in London.88 Under Henderson’s tutelage, her voice improved dramatically and her career blossomed. Henderson recalled,

It was just a very nice, smooth, rather dark voice, without any real interpretation. Then she came to me a little later at the Academy (where I was teaching at the time), and said ‘please can I have some lessons’. The first song she sang was ‘Erlkonig’. She sang it in English, and there was no interpretation at all. But the instrument was undoubtedly there.89

He added that it would have taken most students six or seven years to achieve a professional standard, but according to Peter Pears, Ferrier ‘studied every move, every flicker of her eyelids, every crescendo and diminuendo’, and quickly developed to that standard.90 Hutchinson later explained that part of the reason for her rapid improvement was because ‘the space and the consequent warm spacious tone were there already when she sang in her first lessons’.91

Her first London engagement, on 28 December 1942, was a lunchtime concert at the in , as part of ’s concert series.92 In a confidential appraisal for the BBC, Lennox Berkeley described the strengths and weaknesses of the young singer’s performance:

85 Leonard, Kathleen, 38. 86 Kathleen Ferrier, letter to Nancy Evans, 17 April 1947, in Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, 436. 87 Leonard, Kathleen, 43. 88 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. ‘Henderson, Roy Galbraith (1899–2000)’, by J.B. Steane, accessed 14 March 2018, http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. 89 Roy Henderson, ‘Roy Henderson, Kathleen’s Teacher, Talks about Kathleen’s Voice’, 1CD0154655, BLSA. 90 Peter Pears, ‘Roy Henderson, Kathleen’s Teacher, Talks about Kathleen’s Voice’. 91 Roy Henderson, Kathleen Ferrier: A Memoir, 237-38. 92 Leonard, Kathleen, 51.

32 She has a fine and powerful voice of real contralto quality and seemed to me an accomplished singer. Her intonation was on the whole very accurate and her diction was good. On the other hand I found her rather dull; her tone was monotonous. I cannot imagine that she could ever move one, though there is no doubt about her competence or the good quality of her voice.93

Ferrier evidently worked hard to overcome those weaknesses, and the following year, on 13 March, she and pianist Gerald Moore were booked for their first recital together.

On 17 May 1943 Ferrier performed the alto solos in the Messiah, with Peter Pears as tenor soloist and as soprano soloist. This was the most important and prestigious engagement of her career to date. Moreover, Benjamin Britten was in the audience. Pears later recalled that only a year after singing the Messiah together, Ferrier was a ‘star’: ‘very quickly, even in those days, the 1940s, when the country was at war, and there were fewer competitors around, she soon had a huge fan following’.94 Ferrier’s reputation continued to grow, and she broadened her repertoire to include oratorios by Bach and Elgar, and Stabat Mater settings by Dvořák and Pergolesi.

In 1944 Ferrier made her recording debut with Columbia, singing two little known Maurice Greene songs. Her performance received positive reviews, such as the following in : ‘An English singer who has rapidly come to the front recently as a well-equipped contralto is Miss Kathleen Ferrier. … Miss Ferrier’s voice is full and rich, darkish in colour but flexible and capable of Handelian energy in “O praise the Lord”, as of quieter, more sustained, and, and expressive singing in “I will lay me down in peace’’’.95 At the suggestion of Roy Henderson, Ferrier moved from Columbia to Decca in 1945, and she stayed with that label for the remainder of her career.

Ferrier made her operatic debut in 1946 as Lucretia in Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia, which raised her profile and led to further engagements. 1947 was a particularly important year for her as she was invited to sing the role of Orfeo in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and she performed Mahler’s under the baton of Bruno Walter at the inaugural Edinburgh Festival.96 From 1946 onwards Ferrier began to enjoy a truly international career, with performances of The Rape of Lucretia in Holland, and then in 1948 with her first visit to North America. Ferrier received a positive—albeit lukewarm—

93 Lennox Berkeley, letter to Arthur Winn, 28 December 1942, Kathleen Ferrier Radio Contributor File, BBC Written Archives. 94 Peter Pears, ‘The Singer and the Person’. 95 ‘Vocal Records’, Times, 10 March 1945, KFA. 96 Paul Campion, Ferrier: A Career Recorded (London: Julia MacRae, 1992) 19.

33 reception in America, unlike the rapturous praise she received at home. In her own words, some critics were ‘enthusiastic, others unimpressed’.97

Two more trips to America were to follow in 1949 and 1950, and by now Ferrier’s formidable reputation preceded her. Ferrier gave her second Britten premiere in Spring Symphony on 14 July 1949 at the Holland Festival. In other important engagements she worked alongside top international singers and musicians, such as Elisabeth Schwartzkopf and (1950), and (1951). In 1951, at the peak of her success, Ferrier was diagnosed with breast cancer, forcing her to cancel engagements between March and June.98 Although in the second half of 1951 she resumed her busy schedule, from that time she was troubled by ill health and required extensive medical treatment, sometimes necessitating hospitalisation.

This image is under copyright.

Figure 5: Peter Pears, Kathleen Ferrier, and Benjamin Britten posing for a press photo, 1952. They didn’t have a copy of Canticle II handy, so instead they used a telephone book. Ferrier wore a veil to disguise her sickly pallor. Bromide print, National Portrait Gallery, accessed 4 April 2018, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw161744/Peter-Pears-Kathleen- Ferrier-Benjamin-Britten.

1952 began with much hope for recovery, and Ferrier, Pears and Britten toured England performing Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac—the third of Britten’s compositions for Ferrier

97 Kathleen Ferrier, letter to Winifred Ferrier, 16 January 1948, in Fifield, Letters and Diaries, 68. 98 Fifield, Letters and Diaries, 171.

34 (Figure 5).99 Although Ferrier continued performing (in England, and only occasionally abroad—her doctor advised her against travelling outside of the country), her health continued to deteriorate. According to a letter to Benita Cress, in August 1952 Ferrier ‘had a week of invitations last week—funny how everything comes at once. Bayreuth, Scala, New York, and now Stravinsky in Germany, turned them all down’.100 In February 1953 Ferrier gave her final—now legendary—performances, singing the role of Orfeo at Covent Garden. During the second of the four scheduled performances, her femur gave way while she was on stage, and, while she continued singing for the remainder of the opera, the last two performances were cancelled. Ferrier spent the final months of her life in hospital and in bed at home, where she died on 8 October 1953.

Following Ferrier’s death, memorial funds for cancer research and, separately, for the encouragement of young singers, were set up in her name.101 Currently, the Kathleen Ferrier Society administers funds for the UCL Kathleen Ferrier Fund (for Cancer Research), and to the Kathleen Ferrier Society Bursary for Young Singers.102 The Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship has become one of the most prestigious singing awards of its kind in the world, and previous winners have gone on to have international operatic careers.103

Ferrier has achieved iconic status, thanks to the legendary story of her life and career, and to her substantial recorded legacy. The majority of her extensive discography has remained in circulation. It seems that she sang for love and passion rather than money or fame: she did not have a mercenary attitude to her career. Ferrier sang with intelligence and deep feeling, and possessed a high level of musicianship. She appealed to audiences for her emotional directness and pure, rich vocal timbre. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of her death, Gramophone’s September 2003 issue was dedicated to Ferrier, and featured her portrait on the cover. In 2012, on the centenary of her birth, the Royal Mail included an image of Ferrier as Orfeo on a first class stamp for the Britons of Distinction stamp issue.104 Gramophone journalist Martin Cullingford (now editor) declared that ‘It is this power of engagement with both music and listener, which on even the poorest quality recordings

99 Fifield, Letters and Diaries, 210. 100 Ferrier, incomplete letter to Benita Cress, 26 August 1952, in Fifield, Letters and Diaries, 223. 101 Ferrier, Kathleen Ferrier, 11. 102 Kathleen Ferrier Society, accessed 1 March 2018, http://www.kathleenferrier.org.uk/index.php/bursary. 103 The Kathleen Ferrier Awards, accessed 1 March 2018, https://ferrierawards.org.uk. 104 ‘Britons of Distinction’, Collect GB Stamps, 23 February 2012, http://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=22622.

35 cuts through the crackle and hiss, that makes Ferrier's voice so admired 50 years after her death’.105

105 Martin Cullingford, ‘Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow’, Gramophone (September 2003) 29.

36

PART II

37 Chapter 2

Ferrier’s Repertoire and Critical Reception

The foundations of Ferrier’s eventual success as the greatest contralto of the twentieth century can be traced through her earliest repertoire choices. From the outset, Ferrier preferred folk songs, lieder, and oratorio, all in low keys suitable for a low-voiced female singer with relatively little training. With this music Ferrier was able to develop her vocal technique whilst still presenting something at a professional standard for her—largely provincial—audiences. Additionally, as an early-career singer with no language training Ferrier performed songs and arias in English or English translation. As she gained experience and achieved increasing success her confidence with languages grew. Her biggest achievement in this area—and the greatest marker of her progress with language— was her eventual mastery of Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et la mer in 1951. By the end of her career Ferrier’s repertoire had become altogether more sophisticated, encompassing German-language (particularly Mahler), French, and Italian repertoire. This chapter examines particular aspects of Ferrier’s repertoire—English folksongs, Gluck’s Orfeo, Handel’s Messiah, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and , and Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et la mer—and how critics and audiences received her performances.1

ENGLISH FOLKSONG Ferrier’s first singing success was in English art song: a performance of Quilter’s ‘To Daisies’ at the Carlisle Festival in 1937, for which she won the vocal award. The adjudicators remarked, ‘Miss Wilson, of Silloth, had a very, very beautiful voice indeed, one of the finest they had had’.2 Although the Quilter is not a folk song but an art song, her early win as an amateur, untrained singer aged only twenty-five demonstrates Ferrier’s innate ability to connect with her audience through her native language. Reviews were responsive to that, and one critic argued that ‘if you want to know something of the beauty

1 Ferrier’s repertoire also encompassed lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Wolf, oratorios by Bach, Mendelssohn and Elgar, Stabat Mater settings by Pergolesi, and Dvořák, and countless English art songs by composers such as Michael Head, Stanford, Parry, Vaughan Williams, Edmund Rubbra and Purcell. 2 Quoted in Maurice Leonard, Kathleen: The Life of Kathleen Ferrier 1912–1953 (London: Hutchinson, 1988) 30.

38 of the English language, listen to [Ferrier’s] poetic phrasing, her clear enunciation, and her obvious joy in the ring of the words which you know is bright when the right person sings them. … When these qualities are combined, singing becomes a ministry’.3

English folksong was an important part of Ferrier’s repertoire, particularly at the outset of her career. When studying with her first teacher, J.E. Hutchinson, and without formal language training, singing in English negated the need to navigate the difficulties of foreign language pronunciation. Ferrier enjoyed performing folksongs and when she had mastered singing in German and Italian, they still remained a firm staple of her repertoire. A typical program from early in her career included arias by Handel, either in English or English translation (such as ‘Where’er you walk’), songs by Michael Head (‘Sweet chance that led my steps abroad’) and Hubert Parry (‘Love is a bable’), and one or two folksongs (such as Ca’ the Yowes’ and ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’). Ferrier chose low keys for the folksongs, such as ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’ in C major in which the highest note is D5, and ‘O 4 Waly, Waly’ in G major, in which the highest note is again D5. These keys highlighted Ferrier’s rich lower register, over which she had great dynamic and expressive control. Years after her death, Britten recalled the unusual intensity of Ferrier’s folksong interpretations:

Her singing of folksongs was one of the most loveable things I think she ever did. She presented them in a way as if she was sitting outside a cottage in Lincolnshire or something like that, with absolute directness. But of course, for all serious artists, the spontaneity, the apparent effortlessness of their performance on stage, doesn’t just come. It’s the result of a lot of hard work.5

Ferrier’s best-known folksong interpretation (although not one included in her comprehensive 1943 repertoire list) is that of ‘Blow the wind southerly’ which she recorded on 10 February 1949.6 Her name is now synonymous with the song. For example, in Christopher Fifield’s introduction to his collected edition of Ferrier’s letters and diaries he remembers ‘listening to the radio on days off school and hearing her sing “What is life?”, “Blow the wind southerly” or “Keel Row” on morning programmes such as Housewives’

3 Recital review, Crewe, August 1945, clipping in KFA. 4 Trad. arr. Herbert Hughes, ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’, and trad. arr. Benjamin Britten, ‘O Waly, Waly’, Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings: Centenary Edition, Kathleen Ferrier and Phyllis Spurr, recorded 10 February 1949 and 10 December 1951, Decca 4783589, 2012, 14 compact discs. 5 Benjamin Britten, ‘The Singer and the Person: A Portrait of a Well-Loved Person’, BBC Records, REGL 368, 1979. 6 Trad. arr. W.G. Whittaker, ‘Blow the wind southerly’, Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings:, Kathleen Ferrier, recorded 10 February 1949.

39 Choice’.7 Reissues of Ferrier’s recordings (of which there have been many) inevitably include the song, which Michael Berkeley considers ‘so overplayed … but always a potent reminder of Ferrier’s prowess’.8 The performance epitomizes the qualities for which her voice was most praised: her intonation is accurate; her delivery of the text is clear and tender; her consonants are crisp; and her vowels warm and round. Ferrier performed the song in E major, which sits quite low. The lowest note in this version is G♯3. Again, to sing ‘Blow the wind southerly’ in that key would not have been a particular challenge for a singer, trained or otherwise, but making the G♯3 audible in performance would have been challenging for most female singers, even some mezzo-. Ferrier’s command of the song is, therefore, an achievement, despite its apparent simplicity. In a 1951 interview with Gramophone, Ferrier agreed: ‘I think the folk songs I recorded, particularly the unaccompanied “Blow the wind southerly” and “The Keel row”, are good’.9

Ferrier sang ‘Blow the wind southerly’ with a relatively flexible tempo and this, combined with sensitive variation of dynamics, resulted in a moving and dramatic interpretation. Such was the impact of the performance that Rupert Christiansen described it as one of the two recordings that were ‘reputed in their day to outsell those of Vera Lynn and ’.10 For the remainder of the recording (apart from the unaccompanied track), which was produced by , pianist Phyllis Spurr accompanied Ferrier. They recorded: ‘Ma bonny lad’ (trad. arr. W.G. Whittaker), ‘The Keel Row’ (trad. arr. W.G. Whittaker), ‘Have you seen but a whyte lillie grow?’ (trad. arr. Grew/Johnson), ‘Willow, willow’ (trad. arr. Warlock), ‘The lover’s curse’ (trad. arr. Hughes), and ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’ (trad. arr. Hughes/W.B. Yeats). According to Peter Pears, these simple folksongs ‘went straight to the hearts of radio listeners, who’d probably never been near a concert hall’ and appealed to a much broader audience beyond the usual consumers of classical music.11 From Ferrier, the songs required a direct style of singing rather than the full- bodied sound she used for operatic arias. She often sang at a piano or pianissimo dynamic, but still with great intensity, which resulted in an intimate sound. The recording was widely praised, and one critic found himself ‘at a loss for superlatives to convince his readers that this is something completely unique & incomparable’, concluding that he knew ‘of nothing

7 Christopher Fifield, Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, revised and enlarged edition, ed. Christopher Fifield (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2011) 3. 8 Michael Berkeley, ‘Kathleen Ferrier—the Incomparable’, Audio, February 1974, clipping in KFA. 9 W.S. Meadmore, ‘Kathleen Ferrier’, Gramophone, May 1951, 222. 10 Rupert Christiansen, ‘Kathleen Ferrier: Consoling Angel and the Nation’s Darling’, Telegraph, 17 January 2012, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/9019989/Kathleen-Ferrier-Consoling-angel-and- the-nations-darling.html. 11 Peter Pears, ‘The Singer and the Person: A Portrait of a Well-Loved Person’, BBC Records, REGL 368, 1979.

40 that has touched me more intimately or has moved me more deeply than this superb set’.12 According to Sarah Noble, ‘Blow the wind southerly’ became Ferrier’s ‘ tune’, and this recording made her a ‘household name’.13

ORFEO: ‘CHE FARÓ SENZA EURIDICE’ Years before Ferrier learned and performed the role of Orfeo from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, the aria ‘What is life to me without thee?’ (‘Che faró senza Euridice’) was already a staple of her repertoire. Recordings reveal how well the music suited her, and one review praised her realization of the aria for a sound ‘full, rich and apparently without a break, and her capacity for lovely cantabile singing’, while Christina Thoresby described how the ‘beautiful quality of Miss Ferrier’s voice, the trueness of her vocalization and the clarity of her diction are particularly suited to Gluck’s music’.14 Ferrier recorded the aria five times (both as a standalone piece and as part of the opera) over the course of her career, including on 19 May 1944 for her first studio recording, accompanied by Gerald Moore and produced by .15 As it was a test recording, it remained unreleased during Ferrier’s lifetime. However, in 1978 it was released as part of a compilation called Great British Mezzo Sopranos and Contraltos.16 By the time of the recording Ferrier was thirty and had been singing professionally for only a few years.

As the first recorded example of her singing, Ferrier’s voice already reveals its remarkable alto-like depth, warmth, control and strong intonation, but there is a youthfulness, innocence and freshness bespeaking her relative inexperience. The most telling sign of her inexperience, however, is the fact that Ferrier opted to record the 1762 version of the aria that omits the repeated fortissimo F5 (Example 3) at the end. Paul Campion felt that, because of the omission, the recording ‘lacks tension and dramatic 17 interest’. However, although Ferrier chooses not to sing the repeated F5—presumably because the note was at this stage outside her performing capabilities—the vulnerability of her young voice is what gives tension and dramatic insight, not high notes.

12 ‘Sanctum Sanctorium: Ferrier’s Folksongs’, clipping in KFA. 13 Sarah Noble, ‘Kathleen Ferrier: Song of Joy’, Limelight Magazine, 23 April 2012, 42; and Martin Cullingford, ‘Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow’, Gramophone (September 2003) 28–29. 14 R. R., ‘Lunchtime Recital’, Yorkshire Evening Press, 15 November 1943, clipping in KFA; and Christina Thoresby, ‘Ferrier Recital Triumph of Vocal Beauty’, 1949, clipping in KFA. 15 Paul Campion, Ferrier: A Career Recorded (London: Thames, 2005) 3; and Christoph Wilibald Gluck, ‘What Is life?’, Orfeo ed Euridice, Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete EMI Recordings, Kathleen Ferrier and Gerald Moore, recorded 30 June 1944, EMI 9562842, 2012, 3 compact discs. 16 Campion, Ferrier, 4. 17 Campion, Ferrier, 6.

41

Example 3: Christopher Wilibald Gluck, ‘Che faró senza Euridice’, in Orfeo ed Euridice, Vienna version of 1762, bars 454–63.

In 1946, for her first commercial session with Decca, Ferrier made her second recording of ‘What is life’, now accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent.18 This time, Ferrier performed the aria in its best-known iteration, including the final repeated fortissimo F5. The recording was described by Norman Hearn as ‘first-rate’, and in Gramophone Ferrier was praised for a voice ‘free from the characteristic vices of contralto singers, sagging rhythm and too-plummy tone’.19 There are several notable differences between the two recordings. Ferrier’s voice is altogether finer, and she navigates the intervals with greater ease and elegance. She takes the aria at a moderately faster pace

18 Christoph Wilibald Gluck, ‘What Is Life?’, Orfeo ed Euridice, Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings, London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, with Kathleen Ferrier, recorded 27 February 1946. 19 Norman Hearn, Methodist Recorded, 1 August 1946, clipping in KFA; and ‘Songs and Singers’, Gramophone, 24 September 1946, clipping in KFA.

42 (presumably somewhat dictated by Sargent’s ), compared to the slightly dragging tempo of the previous recording with Moore. Her vibrato is also markedly steadier: in the earlier recording, particularly on the lower notes, her vibrato was at times slightly wild, which would have been to do with her as-yet untrained voice. In the 1946, her vibrato sounded steadier in her lower register, and generally more even throughout her range. While the recording is now considered among Ferrier’s ‘most artistically distinguished’,20 not all—such as the critic for Gramophone—were impressed:

Both the Handel aria and ‘Che faró’ demand grand style. Miss Ferrier does not command this, and her low notes have the goitrous quality that seems endemic among English contraltos. But it is evident also that she is a careful musician, and in the higher register her voice is not merely powerful but smooth and pleasing.21

Despite the criticisms, that review would likely have satisfied Ferrier for its praise of the high notes which she previously omitted.

MESSIAH Ferrier made her professional debut as alto soloist in Handel’s Messiah.22 The Messiah was another early and enduring staple of Ferrier’s repertoire, and the work that first brought her ‘to the public’s consciousness’, according to Gramophone’s Martin Cullingford.23 Before her cancer diagnosis in 1951 Ferrier had already given in excess of 125 performances of Messiah, many of which were in the earlier part of her career. The alto solos, which all have low , were again suitable for Ferrier in the early years of her professional career. Performances of Messiah became less frequent as her fame increased and her repertoire broadened. However, despite Ferrier’s frequent performances of the oratorio, there are only two extant recorded excerpts of her singing Messiah: ‘O, thou that tellest good tidings to Zion’ and ‘He was despised’, made in October 1952 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir .24 Ferrier had apparently hoped to record the full work with Decca, and in 1946 Decca had enticed her to the label with the unfulfilled promise of a complete recording.25 In 1953, when Ferrier was incapacitated with breast cancer, Decca

20 Campion, Ferrier, 19. 21 ‘Gramophone Notes’, New Statesman and Nation, 24 August 1946, clipping in KFA. 22 Kathleen Ferrier, Letter to Eileen Saul, 2 November 1940, Letters and Diaries,17. 23 Cullingford, ‘Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow’, 28. 24 George Frederick Handel, ‘O, thou that tellest good tidings to Zion’ and ‘He was despised’, Messiah, Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, with Kathleen Ferrier, recorded 8 October 1952. 25 Campion, Ferrier, 176.

43 eventually fulfilled their promise, not with Ferrier but instead with Proctor as alto soloist.26

The knowledge that this was Ferrier’s penultimate recording before she died adds a certain poignancy to her singing, especially in ‘He was despised’ as she sings the words ‘a man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief’, considering that she, at this time, was dealing with the personal grief of her own illness. Generally, Ferrier’s clear enunciation of the text in this aria is very touching—during the moments when she sings unaccompanied she uses her consonants to great emotional effect, alternately spitting out and caressing the ‘d’s in ‘despised’, depending on her specific intention. Ferrier’s live performances of the aria allegedly moved listeners to tears, as described by Noah Elstein in the Evening News: ‘this remarkable contralto conveyed the entire tragedy with a penetrating quietness and depth of feeling that made many wipe their eyes’.27

Unusually, in ‘He was despised’, Ferrier omits the B-section (‘He gave his back to the smiters’), which Campion considers a loss, arguing that ‘this omission robs the aria of much of its dramatic impact, and the contrast of moods is entirely lost’.28 However, the main advantage of Ferrier’s recording of the aria, despite the omission, is the opportunity to hear her incredible resonance and strength at the bottom of her range. For example, the vocal line regularly sits on B♭3 (Example 4), which Ferrier sings with unusual strength.

Example 4: Georg Frederick Handel, ‘He was despised’, Messiah, bars 19–21.

Of Ferrier’s low notes in Messiah, Britten recalled his ‘straight reaction’, that

26 Campion, Ferrier, 176. (1928–2017) was an English contralto, best known for her Mahler interpretations. She was a friend of Ferrier’s, and after Ferrier’s death performed Ferrier’s roles in The Rape of Lucretia, Spring Symphony, and Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac. Procter was also celebrated for her performances of the alto solos in Handel’s Messiah, and the title role in Gluck’s Orfeo. Although a fine contralto singer in her own right, throughout her career she was overshadowed by Ferrier’s legacy. ‘Norma Procter, Classical Singer—Obituary’, Telegraph, 12 May 2017, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2017/05/12/norma- procter-classical-singer-obituary. 27 Noah Elstein, ‘Handel’s Messiah’, Manchester Evening News, 12 December 1949, clipping in KFA. 28 Campion, Ferrier, 176.

44 here was a voice that could sing this extremely awkward music without any effort. I mean just in the part of the voice which is usually the weakest, Kathleen’s voice was the strongest. And so the music sailed across the vast spaces with a confidence and a beauty, which I think I’d never heard before. I was very excited.29

This observation is true of Ferrier’s recording: with other Messiah interpreters, such as

Norma Procter and , while both adequately and ably sing B♭3, there is audibly less strength and resonance at the bottom of their respective ranges.30 Remarkably,

Ferrier’s singing of B♭3 gives the impression that she was nowhere near the lower limit of her voice. She sings the note in , and with such depth that it suggests her range extends much lower. Ferrier carries that resonance to the B♭4 an octave above, but without adding weight to the voice, even as she sings at a piano dynamic.

Ferrier’s recording of ‘O, thou that tellest good tidings to Zion’ is a complete contrast to ‘He was despised’. This joyous, buoyant aria shows an altogether different side of her voice, demonstrating her capacity for light singing, and accurate—if not terribly speedy—runs. Despite the faster tempo, Ferrier’s voice retains its fullness and warmth. Again, her version is in a slightly altered arrangement: rather than the usual chorus entry at the end of the aria, the orchestra plays a recapitulation of the opening. The likely explanation is that the recording session was booked for Ferrier, conductor, and orchestra, rather than for full Messiah company and chorus. The coupling of the two contrasting Messiah arias together in the one recording not only demonstrates Ferrier’s capacity for slow, moving singing as well as lighthearted and jolly singing, but her ability to easily move between the two emotional landscapes in the one performance.

Despite the limited recorded legacy of Ferrier’s Messiah performances, there are a number of live performance reviews of that work from throughout her career. Earlier reviews, while praising Ferrier, did not necessarily single her out as the ‘star performer’, whereas later in her career, Ferrier herself became the attraction. However, early on her fine singing was still often remarked upon. A very early review, from 1941, introduced the then- little-known singer:

The performance was enriched by an unexpectedly beautiful rendering of the contralto part. …[Ferrier’s] voice had a lovely creamy quality. The air, ‘He shall feed His flock’, glowed

29 Britten, ‘The Singer and the Person’. 30 For Procter’s interpretation, see George Frederic Handel, Messiah (Highlights), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Choral Society, Sir Malcolm Sargent, with Norma Procter et al, recorded 1965, Reader’s Digest RC7-193, 1996; and for Baker’s interpretation, see Handel, Messiah, English Chamber Orchestra, Ambrosian Singers, Sir , with Janet Baker, recorded 1967, Warner Classics 2435694493, 2005.

45 with tender conviction. The significance of ‘He was despised and rejected’ was deepened by beauty and sincerity of expression.31

Four years later, Ferrier’s reputation had grown considerably, and it was with familiarity that critics now mentioned her performances, although some still did not draw special attention to her singing. For example, following a performance in 1945, one review in Blackburn Times explained that although it is ‘customary to single out for special mention’ the individual soloists, ‘to do so in connection with this performance would somehow be out of place’ considering the overall high standard of the performance.32 Those who did ‘single out’ Ferrier often praised her interpretation of ‘He was despised’ for its ‘poignancy and dignity’ and ‘sincerity’.33 Overall, her singing and stage presence impressed, and frequently overshadowed the work of her colleagues, who (as described in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner) were not always ‘of equal merit. Miss Kathleen Ferrier was outstanding …

We doubt if any contemporary singer can give the contralto solos with finer eloquence. … Her singing has the merit of both a consistently even production of beautiful tone and an artistic and thoughtful exposition of the text, and her tonal gradations are always marked by a first class imagination.34

By 1952, rather than being relegated to a mention at the end of a review, Ferrier was the main event in a Messiah performance, both in the praise she received and the hierarchy of mentions within the review itself: ‘Kathleen Ferrier’s matchless singing at the Hallé concert at the , Manchester, yesterday, was a lesson in how to convey, by simplicity of emphasis and phrasing, that the meaning of the words is deeply appreciated’.35

While Ferrier’s discography lacks a complete Messiah recording, the overwhelmingly positive reviews of performances throughout her career demonstrate her affinity with the work, and highlight why it remained a mainstay of her repertoire. As Peter Pears remembered, ‘Kathleen Ferrier was one of the really quite few contraltos I’ve ever known, who could sing the Messiah wholly convincingly’, and this impression of Ferrier’s personal suitability for the alto solos in the Messiah is inextricably linked to her association with the

31 N. H., ‘The Messiah: Fine Performance at St. Annes’, unknown newspaper, 21 December 1941, clipping in KFA. 32 ‘The Messiah Concert: Blackburn’s Broadcast to the Nation’, Blackburn Times, 28 December 1945, clipping in KFA. 33 B. A., ‘Philharmonic Messiah’, Liverpool Echo, 24 December 1945, clipping in KFA; and R.H.C., ‘Messiah Broadcast from Blackburn’, Northern Daily Telegraph, 27 December 1945, clipping in KFA. 34 ‘The Choral Messiah: Fine Singing by Kathleen Ferrier: Superb Chorus Work’, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 22 December 1945, clipping in KFA. 35 M. S., ‘Art of the Messiah’, News Chronicle, 14 April 1952, clipping in KFA.

46 music.36 Her recording is of its time—slow, legato, with extensive use of portamenti—and singers will now rarely omit the B-section. Further, in a contemporary performance a countertenor, rather than a contralto, is more likely to sing the alto solos, because a countertenor is considered closer to the original castrato singer. Ferrier’s recording is, therefore, an important time capsule from 1952, before Messiah performances were subject to modern-day ‘historically informed’ strictures.

MAHLER: DAS LIED VON DER ERDE AND KINDERTOTENLIEDER From 1946 onward, Ferrier’s association with Britten marked a change in direction. Ferrier’s work with Britten encouraged her to move out of her comfort zone, both as a stage performer and in the scope of her repertoire choices. One such change was the incorporation of Mahler into her repertoire. Orfeo and Messiah were mainstays of Ferrier’s repertoire: they were suitable for her fledgling contralto voice at the outset of her career, and by her untimely death had become vehicles for the technical solidity and beauty of her low singing. Mahler, on the other hand, was introduced into Ferrier’s repertoire in 1946–47 at the encouragement of the conductor Bruno Walter (Figure 6). Of that first meeting Walter wrote,

I asked her to sing Lieder by Brahms and, I believe, Schubert; after these I begged her also to try some lines of the Song of the Earth, which she did not know. She overcame their great difficulties with the ease of a born musician, and I recognized with delight that here was potentially one of the greatest singers of our time; a voice of rare beauty, a natural production of tone, a genuine warmth of expression, an innate understanding of the musical phrase—a personality.37

Her performances and recordings of Mahler came after years of study and development, and at a time when she could rely on a solid vocal technique. Ferrier became known for her Mahler interpretations, and was considered by many the foremost Mahler interpreter in the world. Ferrier credited Walter for this success:

My greatest good fortune has been working with Dr. Bruno Walter. To work and learn with him the works and songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler is to feel that one is gaining knowledge and inspiration from the composer himself. It is truly memorable to rehearse with him. It's very exciting, and sometimes almost unbearably moving.

36 Peter Pears, ‘The Singer and the Person’. 37 Bruno Walter, quoted in Winifred Ferrier, Kathleen Ferrier: Her Life, 80–81.

47 Everything he says and does is done from complete sincerity and real love of the music… he paints a picture in few words, and the expression on his face sets the mood immediately.38

This image is under copyright.

Figure 6: Kathleen Ferrier with Bruno Walter, Edinburgh, circa 1947, in Vivien Schweitzer, ‘A Voice that Embraced a Nation’, New York Times, 6 July 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/arts/music/kathleen-ferrier-and-her-centennial- cd.html.

In 1947, Ferrier made her Das Lied von der Erde debut to great acclaim at the inaugural Edinburgh Festival. Bruno Walter conducted the performance and Peter Pears was the tenor soloist. The performance on the whole was well received, and Ferrier in particular was praised for her interpretation. Critics inevitably compared the singing of the two soloists, often in Ferrier’s favour. For one reviewer, ‘the performance was enhanced by the splendid singing of Kathleen Ferrier’, but unfortunately ‘Peter Pears did not fully meet the requirements’ of Mahler’s vocal writing.39 Alternatively, rather than comparing the two singers, the Punch critic instead singled Ferrier out and largely ignored Pears: ‘Days afterwards I still seem to hear that haunting, heartbreaking farewell, and Kathleen Ferrier’s

38 Kathleen Ferrier, ‘What the Edinburgh Festival Has Meant to Me’, BBC Third Programme 1949, T9188, BLSA. 39 ‘Edinburgh Festival: Schubert and Mahler from Our Special Correspondent’, September 1947, clipping in KFA.

48 glorious voice singing “Ewig … ewig … ewig” across time and space’.40 Performances the following year in New York received more tepid reviews, which disappointed Ferrier. That less enthusiastic response was largely to do with context: in England critics and audiences celebrated her, being already famous and well loved. In America, on the other hand, Ferrier was a foreigner, and perhaps in competition with well-loved American singers. While still well known in America, Ferrier was not quite as famous there as she was at home. However, Ferrier still received ample praise for her ‘rarely beautiful voice—opulent and warm in its lower register, clear and appealing in quality higher up’ (Robert A. Hague, PM), and for the ‘unfailing perceptiveness and inwardness which pervaded her conception of this music with its blend of hopeless despair and resignation’ (Jerome D. Bohm, New York Herald Tribune).41

Ferrier’s accomplished 1947 and 1948 performances of Das Lied von der Erde are an achievement, considering her limited repertoire in the early 1940s. By now she was often considered ‘the ideal Mahler interpreter’.42 Previously, such as in 1944 when she recorded ‘What is life?’, Ferrier had little confidence singing above the stave (in performance), as demonstrated by her decision to record the 1762 version of the aria, which omits the repeated F5. In 1952 Ferrier and Walter—with the and tenor soloist —recorded Das Lied von der Erde.43 At this time she was receiving treatment for her cancer, and was apparently in ‘considerable pain’ when she made the recording.44 Ferrier’s performance of the final movement, ‘Der Abschied’, is evidence of her dramatic improvement over eight years (almost the length of her career). In this movement, the tessitura is considerably higher than in Orfeo, Messiah, and the folksongs, and Mahler occasionally calls on the contralto soloist to sing a G5 at a pianissimo dynamic (Example 5), which, for a low-voiced singer, is much more difficult than singing the note at a forte dynamic.

The recording reveals Ferrier’s excellent control of her voice throughout her range, particularly on those soft and delicate high notes. Reviews were generally positive, and the critic for New Statesman and Nation described it as being ‘performed by its finest living interpreters, and excellently recorded’, but quibbled that ‘one might perhaps wish for a

40 D.C.B., Review, Punch, 1947, clipping in KFA. 41 Robert A. Hague, ‘Bruno Walter Returns’, review, PM, 1948, clipping in KFA; and Jerome D. Bohm, ‘Philharmonic: Walter’s First Appearance of Season as Its Conductor’, New York Herald Tribune, 16 January 1948, clipping in KFA. 42 Review, Observer, 21 September 1952, clipping in KFA. 43 Gustav Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde, Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings, Wiener Philharmoniker, Bruno Walter, with Kathleen Ferrier, Julius Patzak, recorded 16 May 1952. 44 Quoted in Kathleen Ferrier: An Ordinary Diva, directed by Suzanne Phillips (Decca, 2004), DVD.

49 more sensuous note in Miss Ferrier’s voice’ at the end of the fourth movement. 45 Harmonically, Das Lied von der Erde presented more challenges compared to the diatonic folksongs and music of Handel and Gluck to which Ferrier was used. Performing Britten’s Rape of Lucretia in 1946 and later Spring Symphony broadened Ferrier’s harmonic palette, and prepared her for the difficult job of navigating awkward intervals over Mahler’s lush orchestration.

Example 5: Gustav Mahler, ‘Auf Wegen die von weichen Grasse schwellen’, Das Lied von der Erde, 1908, vocal score arr. Erwin Stein, 1942, bar 32.

Ferrier’s recording of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder was a landmark achievement in her career, not least because she had to battle with her agent in order to be allowed to record under Walter’s label.46 After some difficulty, Ferrier and Walter eventually made their recording with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on 4 October 1949 at Kingsway Hall.47 Logistical difficulties aside, the sound quality of this recording is possibly the clearest yet of all Ferrier’s recordings, capturing the richness and depth of her voice. In the second movement, ‘Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle ’ (‘Now I see well, why such dark flames’), a new sweetness is revealed in her voice, especially as she reaches for higher notes, lighter now than in previous recordings. In Ferrier’s lower register she mixes her head and chest voice to achieve a stronger, more assertive sound. While the critic for Listener complained of a certain ‘stiffness’ in Ferrier’s voice in this recording, the reception was

45 ‘Gramophone Notes’, New Statesman and Nation, 11 October 1952, clipping in KFA. 46 Kathleen Ferrier, letter to Harry Sarton, 19 May 1949, Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, 102. 47 Gustav Mahler, Kindertotenlieder, Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings, Wiener Philharmoniker, Bruno Walter, with Kathleen Ferrier, recorded 4 October 1949.

50 overwhelmingly positive, and her singing was again applauded in Gramophone for its ‘richness in the lower register’, and in Musical Opinion for her ‘musicianship and artistry’.48

CHAUSSON: POÈME DE L’AMOUR ET DE LA MER Ferrier’s recording of Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer (1882–93) marked the pinnacle of her technical singing achievement, and gives a glimpse of what she might have achieved had she lived longer.49 At Sir ’s encouragement, Ferrier spent eighteen months learning and rehearsing Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer, which she performed in concert with Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra at Milton Hall in Manchester on 9 March 1951. Barbirolli recalled,

I persuaded her to take up some French music, and we started with Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer. In spite of her protests that it was too high for her, I nevertheless advertised it for performance, and she got down to hard work on it. As I had foreseen, the sensitivity of her musical nature soon became attuned to the more flowing and transparent texture of this kind of music, with a corresponding increase not only in the range of her voice but also in her resources of vocal colouring.50

Just days after the performance Ferrier was diagnosed with breast cancer.51 This was, therefore, the last new piece of music Ferrier worked on and performed before she started the grueling treatment for her illness. The Chausson is an anomaly in Ferrier’s repertoire: it was the only French-language composition that she learnt and performed; and it was originally performed by soprano, making it much higher than her usual repertoire. Ferrier took time learning the Chausson, which she studied ‘very slowly, very severely’.52 She explained that, because of her ‘Lancashire accent protruding’, she was for a while hesitant to sing in French, and was overwhelmed because ‘the repertoire is so big’.53 She added that ‘to do French badly would be so dire’.54 While learning the text, Ferrier received coaching

48 ‘Broadcast Music: Being Cheerful’, Listener, 21 September 1950, clipping in KFA; A.R., ‘Mahler: Kindertotenlieder’, Gramophone, December 1952, clipping in KFA; and C.G.-F., ‘London Philharmonic Orchestra’, Musical Opinion, July 1950, clipping in KFA. 49 Ernest Chausson, Poème de l’amour et de la mer, in Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings, Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, with Kathleen Ferrier, recorded 9 March 1951. 50 Sir John Barbirolli, ‘Kathleen… The Last Years’, in Kathleen Ferrier: A Memoir, ed. Neville Cardus (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1954) 39. 51 Fifield, Letters and Diaries, 171. According to oncologist Professor Robert Souhami, Ferrier had been ‘sick for some time and had concealed it’. At the time of her mastectomy, the tumour had already spread. Professor Robert Souhami, quoted in Kathleen Ferrier: An Ordinary Diva, directed by Suzanne Phillips (Decca, 2004), DVD. 52 Kathleen Ferrier, ‘Radio Interview with Eric McLean’, 3 October 1950, Montreal, 1CD0298196, BLSA. 53 Ferrier, ‘Radio Interview’. 54 Ferrier, ‘Radio Interview’.

51 from Pierre Bernac in Paris.55 This is also indicative of Ferrier’s status and success at the time: Pierre Bernac was a French baritone and teacher, and the partner of composer , and he worked with some of the best singers of the mid-twentieth century.56

Example 6: Ernest Chausson, Poème de L’amour et de la mer, vocal score, op. 19, 1892, fig. 16.

Ferrier’s Chausson recording is quite distorted, but the fine qualities of her voice are still evident. Again, as with her previous recordings, her intonation is accurate, and she sings each note with care and precision. Although Ferrier’s voice now reveals a cleaner mezzo- soprano sound in her top register, her full-bodied contralto is still present, such as at fig. 16 when she lands on a loud C4 after almost two full bars of forte F5 (Example 6). Ferrier’s French is praiseworthy: each individual vowel sound and inflection is clear and polished. Despite the fact that the Chausson was a challenging anomaly amongst the lower-set English, Italian, and German repertoire, Ferrier still received some of her highest praise yet

55 Kathleen Ferrier, letter to John Newmark, 20 January 1951, Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, 139. 56 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Bernac, Pierre’, by Alan Blyth, accessed 7 December 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/subscriber/article/grove/music/02837.

52 for her performances of the work at the 1951 Edinburgh Festival. The critic for Weekly Scotsman exclaimed that ‘every beauty I have commented on in the recital, and perhaps more besides, was present in this hauntingly tragic piece, which once again seemed to show a growth of deep expressiveness in the singer’.57 Unexpectedly, the reviewer for the Scotsman stated that he normally doubted Ferrier’s capacity for heartfelt singing, although on this occasion found that ‘her treatment of the latter part of “La Mort de l’Amour” was sufficient answer. It was a distinguished and most moving performance’.58 Among the various compliments Ferrier’s performance received, her interpretation was thought so fine that the critic for Journal suggested the work ‘might have been written for Miss Ferrier’, while another found that her ‘own mobile features mirrored the plaint of dead love as expressively as her full young voice’.59 Despite the praise, Ferrier was not completely immune to criticism, and her French pronunciation was faulted when the Nottingham Evening Standard reviewer did not find it ‘easy to recognise some of her words’.60

ORFEO: THE ROLE Ferrier ended her career as she began it: with Orfeo. However, before Ferrier’s final performance as Orfeo at the Royal Opera, she was already well acquainted with the role. In 1947, she made her debut as Orfeo at Glyndebourne, conducted by . This was her second performance in an opera after Lucretia in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, which she premiered in 1946. With the full Glyndebourne company and chorus, Ferrier recorded the opera in Italian on 22 June 1947. Stiedry’s tempo is faster than in Ferrier’s previous recording (3′17″, compared to 4′34″ with Gerald Moore), something for which she was both criticized and praised in reviews.61 For example, Desmond Shawe-Taylor commented that Ferrier’s ‘performance is never less than sincere and dignified (except when Mr. Fritz Stiedry raced through her “Che faro”)’, while the critic for Listener countered that ‘here was not a lifeless dirge, but a passionate outpouring of grief, urgent and so moving that the god’s relenting seemed something more than a feeble short-cut to a happy ending’.62 That recording is indeed impassioned, and in great contrast to the languid first recording with

Moore. Ferrier’s frequent C4s are sung in head voice—not chest voice, as in her recording

57 ‘With the Halle’, Weekly Scotsman, September 1951, clipping in KFA. 58 ‘Halle Orchestra: Kathleen Ferrier’, Scotsman, 10 September 1951, clipping in KFA. 59 ‘High Standard of Work’, 8 September 1951, clipping in KFA; and ‘Feast of Music by Halle’, Nottingham Journal, 28 September 1951, clipping in KFA. 60 ‘Sir John Led the Applause’, Nottingham Evening Standard, 28 September 1951, clipping in KFA. 61 Gluck, Orfeo, in Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings, Southern Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndebourne Festival Chorus, Fritz Stiedry, with Kathleen Ferrier et al, recorded 22 June 1947. 62 Desmond Shawe-Taylor, review, 1947, clipping in KFA; and ‘Broadcast Music: Revived’, Listener, 3 July 1947, clipping in KFA.

53 with Moore—which demonstrates Ferrier’s now more integrated sound between vocal registers. She also makes more distinct tempo changes, such as at bar 24 marked un poco lento, which slows considerably before the following a tempo and reintroduction of the opening melody (Example 7).

Example 7: Gluck, ‘Io son pure’, ‘Che faró senza Euridice’, Orfeo ed Euridice, bars 20–29.

A noticeable aspect of this recording is Ferrier’s accent: her Italian, on occasion, sounds very English. Her vowels are broad, and her dipthongs are pronounced. For example, rather than singing ‘Che faró senza Euridice’, she sings something that sounds more like ‘Kay far- row senz-Euridichay’. Unsurprisingly, in a letter to Audrey Christie, Ferrier admitted to struggling with the Italian. ‘I am staggering through Orfeo’, she wrote, ‘the memorizing of the Italian was a struggle at first with all the other work I had to do—but I have been going to an Italian, Mr Gibilaro, who has helped me terrifically, and now I feel I’m getting the upper hand’.63 However, despite Ferrier’s lingual difficulties, she gives a musical and

63 Kathleen Ferrier, letter to Audrey Christie, 4 May 1947, Letters and Diaries, 39.

54 moving interpretation of the score, her voice is rich and warm, and the F5 at the end of the aria is secure in her voice. Reviews of the performance singled out not only Ferrier’s interpretation of ‘Che faró’, but also ‘Che puro ciel’, which ‘combines purity and fullness of tone with dead centre pitch: what makes it outstandingly memorable, apart from the spare loveliness of Gluck’s music, is the quality of wonder and unfolding hope which Miss Ferrier here infuses into a vocal line which has been so heavy with lament’.64

Ferrier’s final performance of Orfeo—and, tragically, of her career—was at Covent Garden, which also happened to be her Royal Opera debut. Rather than use the original Italian as in Ferrier’s 1947 performances, the Royal Opera opted to use John Troutbeck’s English translation.65 The choice of English rather than Italian brought Ferrier’s career to a full circle, beginning and ending with her now trademark ‘What is life?’. As well as commenting on Ferrier’s singing, critics debated her ability to personify a male character. Originally composed for castrato Gaetano Guadagni, Gluck transposed the role of Orfeo down a fifth for tenor for the Paris premiere in 1773 (castrati were not employed at the Paris Opera), and in the nineteenth century Berlioz again transposed the role to be performed by legendary contralto Pauline Viardot.66 The gender of Orfeo has, therefore, remained a variable entity. According to Wendy Bashant, as the father of song rather than of man, Orpheus is ‘not-man and not-woman’ but a ‘mythic figure who exaggerates the codes of sexual difference he himself displays’.67 Ferrier, as a low-voiced female singer with the majority of her experience on the oratorio and recital platforms rather than the operatic stage, contributed a new chapter to Orfeo’s transgendered history. In 1947 not everyone was convinced by Ferrier’s portrayal, and Margaret Lane, writing for Evening Standard, found it ‘odd to see how unlike a man’s all her movements were’.68 Martin Cooper, writing for the Spectator, was slightly more convinced, declaring Ferrier’s ‘strange but beautiful voice and her almost manly presence an ideal Orpheus’, and in accordance with Bashant’s definition, ‘something nearer a disembodied spirit than a human being’.69 By 1953, however, Ferrier, according to Philip Hope-Wallace, ‘looked handsome’ and was one of the most

64 ‘Gluck’s Orfeo at Glyndebourne’, Observer, 13 July 1947, clipping in KFA. 65 At that time, all operas staged at Covent Garden were performed in English. Alan Blyth, ‘Adèle Leigh’, Guardian, 18 June 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/jun/18/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries. 66 Wendy Bashant, ‘Singing in Greek Drag: Gluck, Berlioz, George Eliot’, in En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera, ed. Corinne E. Blackmer and Patricia Juliana Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995) 219. 67 Bashant, ‘Singing in Greek Drag’, 218. 68 Margaret Lane, ‘Glyndebourne—and Kathleen Ferrier’, Evening Standard, 1947, clipping in KFA. 69 Martin Cooper, ‘Music’, Spectator, 27 June 1947, clipping in KFA.

55 believable interpreters’ of Orfeo (see Figure 7).70 She was now frequently praised for her ‘noble’ interpretation of the role and, according to Rosemary Hughes in Tablet, apparently gave a convincingly masculine performance:

But it is with Orpheus by which the work, as a living opera, stands or falls—Orpheus, originally a castrati role such as normally defies convincing interpretation by a woman, however beautiful her voice. Kathleen Ferrier’s voice, however, is not merely beautiful, but entirely free from luscious mess, and her stature and presence, enhanced by her inspired make-up, gave her a noble and perfectly credible male aspect, the contralto voice merely lending an aura of the supernatural as befits a Muse’s son. Add to that musicianship and the capacity to act with intelligence, to move with dignity, and, above all, to be still, and we possess an Orpheus meet to Harrow Hell for the first prize of Gluck’s deathless masterpiece.71

This image is under copyright.

Figure 7: Veronica Dunne as Eurydice and Kathleen Ferrier as Orfeo, Royal Opera, 1953, in Mel Clarke, ‘On Song’, Times, 14 February 2016, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/on- song-3wj25x96525.

70 Philip Hope-Wallace, ‘Gluck’s Orpheus: New Production at Covent Garden’, Manchester Guardian, 5 February 1953, clipping in KFA. 71 Rosemary Hughes, ‘Farewell to the Shades’, Tablet, 14 February 1953, clipping in KFA.

56 Due to Ferrier’s illness, she was only able to perform two of the scheduled four performances of Orfeo. During the second performance, with her doctor mercifully stationed in the wings, Ferrier’s left femur partially disintegrated and a fragment of bone broke away.72 Ferrier continued to sing, but afterwards had to be carried away on a stretcher.73 Victoria Dunne, singing the role of Euridice, ‘hadn't realised how ill she was until then. [She] had never mentioned it’.74 Such was her conviction in the role that the critic for Musical Opinion praised Ferrier for her ‘stillness’, unaware of the fact that she was physically unable to move: ‘Her identification with the part was complete. She had wonderful dignity and pose. There was eloquence even in her standing still’.75 The Royal Opera had mounted the production especially for Ferrier. Instead of casting an understudy or finding a replacement, the final two scheduled performances were replaced by performances of Verdi’s and Beethoven’s .76 Rather than revealing the nature or the severity of Ferrier’s illness, newspaper reports (such as in Manchester Evening News) instead announced that ‘Miss Ferrier is suffering from strain resulting from arthritis which required further treatment. It has been caused by physical stress involved in rehearsal and performance of her role as Orpheus’.77 Ferrier’s fatal illness, and the fact that due to this illness she only appeared in two of the four scheduled Orfeo performances, seems to have increased her association with the role and created an ‘Orphic’ myth around her own legacy. While she like Orpheus bore no children, she like Orpheus left behind a rich bequest of song, and a status verging on the divine.

72 Fifield, Letters and Diaries, 184. 73 Leonard, Kathleen, 233. 74 Victoria Dunne, quoted in Leonard, Kathleen, 232. 75 H.S.R., ‘Opera and Ballet in London’, Musical Opinion, March 1953, clipping in KFA. 76 ‘Kathleen Ferrier: Orpheus Strain’, Manchester Evening News, 10 February 1953, clipping in KFA. 77 ‘Kathleen Ferrier: Orpheus Strain’.

57

PART III

58 Chapter 3

An Extraordinary Lucretia: Kathleen Ferrier’s Role in The Rape of Lucretia

When drafting ideas for The Rape of Lucretia (1946), Kathleen Ferrier was Benjamin Britten’s choice for the title role.1 As he explained,

It was in the last days of the war, at a performance of The Messiah [sic] in Westminster Abbey, that I first heard Kathleen Ferrier sing. I was impressed immediately by the nobility and beauty of her presence, and by the warmth and deep range of her voice. It seemed to me (and still seems so) that hers was one of the very few voices that could tackle the part. So, a few months later, when we were looking for a contralto to play the name part in a new opera I was writing, The Rape of Lucretia, and she was mentioned as a possibility, I enthusiastically welcomed the idea.2

In 1945, Ferrier had not yet performed in an opera and she was an inexperienced stage actress. Audiences knew her as an angelic oratorio singer, not as an opera singer. The pure image and voice that she presented when performing Messiah, and her emerging status as England’s darling, provided a shocking backdrop for both the rape of Lucretia at the hand of Tarquinius, and for the broader symbolism of sexual oppression and exploitation of innocent victims. Because of her inexperience, it may well have seemed, as Paul Kildea

1 Ronald Duncan claims that the role of Lucretia was not written for Ferrier; rather, that she was simply cast in the role. (See Alan Munton, ‘Lucretia Not Written for Ferrier?’, Ronald Duncan Literary Foundation, accessed 19 April 2017, http://www.ronaldduncanfoundation.co.uk/kathleen-ferrier-and-the-rape-of-lucretia.) However, Britten specified that he wrote it for her: in his condolence letter to Winifred after Ferrier’s death, and in ‘Three Premieres’, his contribution to Neville Cardus’s memoir of the singer. He had heard Ferrier sing alongside Pears well before working on the opera, and her voice was firmly in his mind once he set about composing it. Once Ferrier had agreed to sing the role, Britten supplied her with the music as he wrote it. Ferrier herself recalled, ‘The opera still had to be composed, but by April of 1946 the first pages began to come in, and it was printed, thank goodness, and completely legible. … with the help of my accompanist, and after much hard work on railway journeys, I learned each portion of the work as it came through’. Furthermore, there was no precedent for Britten writing a title role without a singer in mind—up until this point his major vocal compositions had all been for specific singers, and there was no reason for him to suddenly compose on speculation. See Kathleen Ferrier, quoted in Winifred Ferrier, Kathleen Ferrier: Her Life (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955) 73. 2 Benjamin Britten, ‘Three Premieres’, Britten on Music, ed. Paul Kildea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 123.

59 suggests, a ‘tin-eared’ decision.3 Kildea considers Ferrier an inappropriate choice for the same reasons that Britten chose her. He argues that Britten wanted her to sing the role ‘wandering around the stage as though in a Handel oratorio’, and claims that, by casting that oratorio singer in the role, Britten ‘undermines’ Lucretia’s ‘power, honour and female sexuality’.4 Yet rather than undermining Lucretia, it will be argued here that Britten consciously and deliberately used Kathleen Ferrier’s voice, presence and body to symbolise the violation of innocence.

BACKGROUND It was Eric Crozier who suggested of Lucretia as a topic for Britten’s second opera.5 Crozier recalled,

The Rape of Lucrèce … was a play I knew from French very well indeed, because as a schoolboy I’d seen it performed by the Compagnie de Quinze. And I’d sent to Paris and got a copy of the original by André Obey, and I had translated it, simply for education. I wanted to learn all I could about that kind of play, and I’d also met Michel Saint Denis, who was director of the Compagnie de Quinze, and I had an enormous admiration for the performing style and integrity of his actors. And, so, when we needed a new opera I gave this to Ben and said, look, we can make an opera of this.6

In 1931 the Compagnie de Quinze performed Le Viol de Lucrèce in London, where it was enthusiastically received for its fresh, simple performance and staging.7 The play integrated mime, movement, song, dance and speech; apparently a revelation to audiences more familiar with British realism.8 That new style of theatre was more modern and European than British theatre at the time, and set the tone that Britten wanted for his next opera after .9 In 1933 Thornton Niven Wilder translated Obey’s play into English, which is presumably the version Duncan used when working on the libretto.10

3 Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 2013) 275. 4 Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 275. Using Lucretia and Ellen Orford as examples, Kildea takes general aim at female characters in Britten’s operas, and argues that he lacks empathy for them. 5 Although Crozier suggested the subject, Britten himself had an abiding interest in classical literature and mythology, as George Caird explains in ‘Six Metamorphoses After Ovid and the Influence of Classical Mythology on Benjamin Britten’, in Benjamin Britten: New Perspectives on His Life and Work, ed. Lucy Walker (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer) 46–55. 6 Eric Crozier, ‘Oral History of Glyndebourne Opera’, 1 of 2 (17 April 1992), C511/41, BLSA. 7 Robert Gordon, The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in Perspective (Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 2006) 148. 8 Gordon, The Purpose of Playing, 148. 9 During the thirties, Britten worked with the ‘avant-garde’ and ‘intellectual and generally left-wing’ Group Theatre, which mounted a number of classical plays, including T.S. Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes, and Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. These and other Group Theatre productions, such as August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death I, were treated as parables with double meanings. For example, The Dance of Death was ‘essentially a Marxist allegory’ which drew parallels between death of seed grain followed by regeneration,

60

PREVIOUS LUCRETIAS Britten was not the first composer to use the story of Lucretia’s rape as the basis of an opera or cantata. Handel composed a cantata titled La in 1706–1707, while living in Italy.11 Handel’s cantata, which emphasises Lucretia’s hatred of Tarquinius, remains one of his best known.12 It is scored for (lyric) soprano solo and continuo, and no other singers or chorus.13 Respighi composed an opera titled Lucrezia in 1937, and it is considered among the musically weakest in his output.14 His opera calls for eleven soloists and a substantial orchestra of instrumentalists. There is also a little-known cantata, Morte de Lucretia (‘Death of Lucretia’) by French composer Michel Pignolet de Montéclair (1667–1737), for soprano, two violins, and basso continuo.15 This highly lyrical cantata is comparable to the Handel in terms of instrumentation, but is not as dramatically intense: the Handel is known for its wide intervallic leaps and vocal range, and the frequent contrasts between coloratura and lyric passages.

The only other twentieth-century example is Ernst Krenek’s (1900–1991) Tarquin (1940), to an English libretto by Emmet Lavery. Tarquin is scored for five singers, small ensemble, and four actors (spoken word, not sung).16 While there is no character named Lucretia, the main soprano role, Corinna, is Lucretia’s counterpart in the opera. Krenek, unlike Britten, modernised the story, setting it in 1925. Tarquin remains Krenek’s only unpublished opera. There are two possible reasons why the opera was never published (and, which therefore explain its subsequent obscurity): first, the title role is considered to be a caricature of Hitler; and second, Krenek’s setting of the English was criticised.17 At the time

and ‘death of the old order’ followed by ‘new order’ brought about by communism. With his adaptation of Obey’s Lucrèce, Britten was carrying on the Group Theatre tradition. Duncan, with his Cambridge education and background in classics, had his own opinion about choosing that setting for the opera, but it was Britten who ultimately chose the theme and shaped the opera. Edward Callan, ‘W.H. Auden’s Plays for the Group Theatre: From Revelation to Revelation’, Comparative Drama 12, no. 4 (Winter 1978–79): 327. 10 Duncan never confirmed whether or not he used Wilder’s translation or the original. 11 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Handel [Händel, Hendel], George Frederic [Georg Frederich], 19: Minor Vocal Works’, by Anthony Hicks, accessed 22 September 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. 12 Handel’s La Lucrezia has been recorded by leading mezzo-sopranos, including Magdalena Kozena, Janet Baker, and Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson. 13 George Frederic Handel, Collected Documents, Volume 1, 1609–1725, ed. Donald Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe, and Anthony Hicks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 419. 14 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Respighi, Ottorino’, by John C.G. Waterhouse, Janet Waterhouse, and Potito Pedarra, accessed 14 September 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. Respighi died while working on Lucrezia, and it was finished by his wife Elsa Respighi. 15 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Montéclair, Michel Pignolet de’, by James R. Anthony, accessed 6 November 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au. 16 Ernst Krenek, ‘Circling My Horizons’, in Horizons Circled: Reflections of My Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974) 45. 17 John L. Stewart, Ernst Krenek: The Man and His Music (California: University of California Press, 1991) 224.

61 Britten began his opera neither Krenek’s nor Respighi’s versions of Lucretia were in the repertoire, although Ronald Duncan was aware of the existence of Respighi’s opera.18

LIVY’S ACCOUNT The story of Lucretia’s rape originates with the historian Titus Livius (Livy) in 9–27 BC. According to Livy in his monumental history of Rome, the men of Rome drunkenly argued over who among them possessed the most chaste wife. It was decided that Collatinus’s wife Lucretia was the paragon of virtue. In Livy’s account, when Tarquin (Tarquinius, in Britten’s opera) first saw Lucretia, ‘he was seized by her beauty and redoubtable chastity’.19 Without Collatinus’s knowledge, Tarquin came to Collatia with only his slave as his companion, where they were welcomed, fed, and shown to a guest room. In the night Tarquin approached ‘the sleeping Lucretia sword in hand and, pressing his hand on her breast, whispered, “Say no word, Lucretia. … You die if you make a sound”’.20 Lucretia woke in fright, but was unable to call for help at the threat of death. Tarquin ‘confessed his passion’, but when he realised she would not submit to him, he ‘threatened to disgrace her even in death by placing the naked body of a murdered black slave next to her corpse, evidence that she had been killed in the act of committing adultery of the basest sort’.21 Tarquin proceeded to rape Lucretia (Livy described him vanquishing her ‘resolute chastity’), and then left the house.22

The following morning, a shocked and grief-stricken Lucretia sent a messenger to her father in Rome and husband in Ardea with the request that each should return quickly, and with only one trustworthy friend. Father and husband were told something terrible had happened but were given no further details. Lucretia’s father arrived with Publius Valerius, and Collatinus arrived with Lucius Junius Brutus.23 When her father found her, ‘downcast in her chamber’, he asked, ‘Are you alright?’ and she replied,

Indeed, no. What can be right when a woman’s virtue has been taken from her? The impress of another man is in your bed, Collatinus; yet only my body has been defiled; my soul is not guilty. Death will be my witness to this. But pledge with your right hands that the adulterer

18 Ronald Duncan, ‘The Libretto: The Method of Work’, in The Rape of Lucretia: A Symposium (London: Bodley Head, 1948) 61. 19 Livy, Chapters 57–59, The Rise of Rome, Books 1–5, trans. Torrey James Luce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 67. 20 Livy, The Rise of Rome, 67. 21 Livy, The Rise of Rome, 67. 22 Livy, The Rise of Rome, 67. 23 Publius Valerius (d. 503) was a Roman aristocrat and consul, and led the overthrow of the monarchy. Lucius Junius Brutus was a Roman consul and the founder of the Roman Republic. In Britten’s opera, this character is referred to as ‘Junius’, rather than ‘Brutus’.

62 will not go unpunished. Sextus Tarquin did this, a guest who betrayed his host, an enemy in arms who took his pleasure, fatal, alas, to me—and, if you act as you should, to him.24

Each man gave Lucretia his word, and tried to comfort her by placing the blame solely on her transgressor. She said, ‘It is up to you to punish the man as he deserves. As for me, I absolve myself of wrong, but not from punishment. Let no unchaste woman hereafter continue to live because of the precedent of Lucretia’.25 Taking the knife she had concealed beneath her clothes, she drove it through her breast. With this she doubled over and died. Livy went on to describe Brutus’s reaction and subsequent actions, which ultimately led to the founding of the Roman Republic.

DIFFERING ACCOUNTS After Livy, Shakespeare was the first major literary figure to tackle the legend of Lucretia. At a substantial 1855 lines, his narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece meditates on the events surrounding Lucretia’s rape and suicide. Shakespeare examines the interior lives of the characters. Tarquinius, for example, imagines the possible excuses for raping Lucretia:

Had Collatinus killed my son or sire, Or lain in ambush to betray my life, Or were he not my dear friend, this desire Might have excuse to work upon his wife.26 Shakespeare also describes the way his inner torment, ghosts, noises and the weather conspire to stop him entering Lucretia’s chamber:

The threshold grates the door to have him heard; Night-wand’ring weasels shriek to see him there; They fright him, yet he still pursues his fear. As each unwilling portal yields him away, Through little vents and crannies of the place The wind wars with his torch to make him stay, And blows the smoke of it into his face.27 These details—Shakespeare’s musings on the human and non-human forces attempting to prevent Lucretia’s rape—transform Tarquinius into an even greater monster than in Livy. Despite his supposed conscience, and despite all the obstacles between him and Lucretia, he

24 Livy, The Rise of Rome, 68. 25 Livy, The Rise of Rome, 68. 26 Shakespeare, ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, in The Poems, updated edition, ed. John Roe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 2006) 163. 27 Shakespeare, ‘Lucrece’, 167.

63 violently forges ahead. As in Livy’s account, Shakespeare has Tarquinius threaten ‘some worthless slave of thine I’ll slay / To kill thine honour with life’s decay’, although unlike in Livy’s account the slave is not black but simply ‘worthless’.28 In the direct aftermath of the rape, Tarquinius’s sense of wrongdoing is reinforced when he confesses to ‘[hating] himself for his offence’, and Shakespeare labels him a ‘heavy convertite’.29

When Tarquinius leaves the chamber, Shakespeare gives Lucretia a thirty-nine-stanza monologue, during which she grieves and rages. She finally resolves to kill herself in order to preserve her husband’s honour, and to rid herself of the shame of being unable to defend herself against Tarquinius. Unlike Livy, Shakespeare likens Lucretia to Philomel—an ill- fated victim of violent rape who morphs into a nightingale. Shakespeare’s reference to Philomel and then to a ‘poor frighted deer’ renders his Lucretia more helpless and fragile than in Livy’s account.30 In the morning Lucretia commands her handmaid to deliver a letter to Collatinus and summon him home. She addresses him as ‘worthy lord’, and labels herself an ‘unworthy wife’.31 Lucretia resolves to momentarily ‘hoard’ in order to ‘spend’ her ‘sighs and groans and tears’ when her husband arrives, so that ‘of her disgrace, the better so to clear her / From the suspicion which the world might bear her’.32 Livy’s Lucretia is not so cunning, and in his account her reactions are not necessarily so premeditated. When Collatinus arrives and Lucretia recounts the horrific events of the previous night, she gives him no time to protest before she kills herself. Her father Lucretius is first to respond. By remaining silent does Collatinus (momentarily) agree that Lucretia should die in order to redeem herself? Shakespeare does not make any such statement, but finally gives Collatinus voice, and he wails for his wife. The narrative poem ends with Lucretia’s brutalised body being paraded around the forum, and a promise by Romans to banish Tarquinius from Rome.

Obey’s play does not deviate far from Livy’s and Shakespeare’s accounts. He introduced two unnamed narrators, First Narrator and Second Narrator, who comment on the action of the play. And, while Obey includes reference to a slave, like Shakespeare he does not specify that the slave is black. Obey quotes both Livy and Shakespeare, and his play ends with a reference to Shakespeare: ‘Poor bird … poor bird. … Poor stricken deer’. He, too, presents Lucretia as a fragile creature. Where Shakespeare examined the interior lives of both

28 Shakespeare, ‘Lucrece’, 176. 29 A ‘heavy convertite’ is a ‘sad penitent’. ‘Convertite here means one seeking reform from sin rather than a convert to a religious way of life’. Shakespeare, ‘Lucrece’, 187. 30 Shakespeare, ‘Lucrece’, 206. 31 Shakespeare, ‘Lucrece’, 213. 32 Shakespeare, ‘Lucrece’, 213.

64 Tarquinius and Lucretia, Obey’s narrators tell the bulk of the story and share their reactions, while Lucretia and Tarquinius are observed by the others. In Wilder’s English translation, Obey’s language is more colloquial and pared-back than the poetic language of Shakespeare.

Britten and Duncan’s opera deviates in one significant respect from Obey: its Christian ending. In Duncan’s libretto, the Male Chorus links Lucretia’s death to the sacrifice of Christ:

Though our nature’s still as frail And we still fall and that great crowd’s no less along that road, endless and uphill, For now he bears our sin and does not fall, And He carrying all turns round stoned with our doubt And then forgives us all For us did He live with such humility For us did He die, that we might live, and He forgive Wounds that we make, and scars that we are In His passion is our hope Jesus Christ, Saviour, He is all, He is all.33

Neither Livy, nor Shakespeare, nor Obey ended their accounts with such Christian proselytising. Claire Seymour argues that this ending emphasises ‘the redemptive nature of Lucretia’s death’.34 She views the ending as ‘a tacit confession of her moral corruption’.35 Britten and Duncan do not imply that Lucretia was at all guilty or that her rape was a confession of moral culpability. It is the situation—the tragic consequences of Lucretia’s rape—that needs to be redeemed, not Lucretia herself. Unlike Obey, whose final description of Lucretia as ‘poor bird’ renders her completely helpless, the Christian ending is less pathetic. Britten and Duncan declare Lucretia as innocent as Christ: she is pure and unblemished despite having been raped; she is sinless; but she is crucified regardless. Her death merely reflects the ‘special conditions’ of Roman times.36 While Britten and Duncan did not question the inevitability of Lucretia’s death, they gave her death an identifiably twentieth-century moral framework, declaring her Christ-like innocence in the circumstance of the rape, which according to Romans rendered her tarnished.

33 Ronald Duncan and Benjamin Britten, The Rape of Lucretia (New York: Boosey & Hawkes, 1946) 320–22, fig. 104. 34 Claire Seymour, The Operas of Benjamin Britten (Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2007) 77. 35 Seymour, Operas, 89. 36 Carolyn Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, in Musicology and Difference, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993) 254.

65 In addition, deviating from Obey, Shakespeare and Livy, Britten and Duncan omit the episode in the legend when Tarquinius, realising Lucretia would not submit to him, threatened to kill both her and his slave to make it look as though ‘she had been killed in the act of committing adultery of the basest sort’.37 This threat was previously used to justify Lucretia’s supposed consent to Tarquinius. Taking that element away, the rape is about a dominant man threatening violence against a defenceless woman. An understanding of Britten’s attitude towards violence, however, is needed to understand the implication of the rape in The Rape of Lucretia. Claire Seymour, in contrast to some modern interpreters of the opera, views Lucretia as a symbol of violent exploitation, arguing that Britten identified with her suffering. Lucretia, in her view,

is, like Peter Grimes, a victim of social tyranny, oppressed by the community that defines her, and the internalisation of this oppression fosters inner guilt which prompts her to take her own life.38

According to Humphrey Carpenter’s biography, Britten himself knew what it was to be raped. Carpenter quoted both Eric Crozier (‘he told me he had been raped by a master at his school’) and Beata Sauerlander (‘he had very traumatic experiences, sexual experiences’), to substantiate his claim.39 Philip Brett argues that Britten was ‘specially alive’ to ‘the shame and guilt involuntarily experienced by rape victims even though they are totally innocent and have been wronged in a particularly horrible manner’.40 He further describes Britten harbouring a ‘lifelong preoccupation with the senseless violence of man’, something that manifests itself in both Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia.41

37 Livy, Rise of Rome, 66–70. 38 Claire Seymour, The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007) 75–77. 39 Eric Crozier and Beata Sauerlander, quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1992) 20. 40 Philip Brett, Music and Sexuality in Britten, ed. George E. Haggerty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) 69. 41 Brett, Music and Sexuality, 68. According to Heather Wiebe, when ‘asked by Culshaw to comment on the prominence in his works of “the theme of the individual against the community”, Britten responds, “I think it must be something that interests me very deeply. I’m never aware of having a set idea… but it does quite clearly fit into the Grimes, Albert Herring, Lucretia—a feeling of the innocence betrayed, perhaps”’. John Culshaw and Benjamin Britten, quoted in Heather Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 10, n 34.

66 THE ‘FALLEN’ WOMAN In The Rapes of Lucretia (1982) Ian Donaldson explores the different iterations of the legend, and questions whether it is story or history. He deduces that it is both, and draws together different versions to create a hybrid account. He argues that Lucretia had no choice but to die, concluding that Lucretia’s suicide confirms that she refused to consent to Tarquinius. Donaldson explains,

Sexual intercourse between a wife and a man other than her husband was seen at this time as an act which mysteriously and irretrievably tainted the woman concerned. No distinction was made between adultery and rape, for the polluting effect of both acts was thought to be the same.42

In The Rape of Lucretia and the Founding of the Republic Melissa M. Matthes explains how important it was for Roman women to abstain from sex—consensual or otherwise—with men to whom they did not ‘legitimately belong’, so that the men to whom they did belong (their husbands) remained certain that the children were their own.43 A woman’s entire family—particularly her husband and children—would be ‘tainted by her adultery’.44 Lucretia, having not yet borne children to Collatinus, may well have been impregnated by Tarquinius. It follows that Lucretia’s suicide is imperative in order to protect the ruling Collatine line.

Even if Lucretia is fiction, there is a real-life analogy with the case of (c.1501–1536).45 As the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536. After being charged with high treason, she was executed by beheading. While historians doubt the voracity of the claim that Anne Boleyn was an ‘adulterer’ (one of the many charges laid against her by the jury during her trial), the accusation ultimately led to her death. Like Lucretia, who repeatedly refused Tarquinius’s advances, Anne Boleyn maintained her innocence, declaring ‘I am as clear from the company of man, as for sin I am clear from you, and am the king’s true wedded wife’.46 Although Lucretia and Boleyn’s

42 Ian Donaldson, The Rapes of Lucretia: A Myth and Its Transformations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) 23. 43 Melissa M. Matthes, The Rape of Lucretia and the Founding of the Republic: Readings in Livy, Machiavelli, and Rousseau (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000) 26. 44 Donaldson, The Rapes of Lucretia, 23. 45 While Duncan assumed that the audience knew ‘the essentials of the plot’ in this ‘well-known story’, J.P.E. Harper-Scott argues that only the classically educated—and mostly male—section of the audience would have understood the codes and references, and the social implications of Lucretia’s rape. Considering the literary history of fallen women, Harper-Scott underestimates the audience’s and creator’s understanding of the implications of Lucretia’s rape. Ronald Duncan, ‘The Libretto: The Method of Work’, in The Rape of Lucretia: A Symposium (London: Bodley Head, 1948) 61. 46 Anne Boleyn, quoted in G.W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (Yale: Yale University Press, 2010) 162.

67 circumstances are different, the similarity is in the consequence of supposed extra-marital acts.

Of all Henry VIII’s wives Anne remains the most famous, and her fate and legacy have been the subjects of opera (Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, composed 1830), film and television, and literature.47 In The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen Susan Bordo argues that although ‘Henry may have tried to erase her’ Anne Boleyn ‘looms large in [England’s] cultural imagination’.48 Bordo seeks to discover why Boleyn is so famous, and what causes such fascination with her. She concludes

The story of her rise and fall is as elementally satisfying—and scriptwise, not very different from a Lifetime movie: a long-suffering, postmenopausal wife [Catherine of Aragon]; an unfaithful husband [King Henry VIII] and a clandestine affair with a younger, sexier woman [Anna Bolena]; a moment of glory for the mistress; then lust turned to loathing, plotting, and murder as the cycle comes full circle.49

Further, Anne Boleyn is a real woman in England’s history, not a character in an historical male script, and her realness reinforces the rule that a queen who has sex with a man other than her husband has no choice but to die.

Similarly, in Victorian literature the fate of the fallen woman was nearly always death. A woman’s fall might be precipitated by a premarital affair—as was the case for the title character in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth and the character Hetty Sorrel in George Eliot’s Adam Bede—or by premarital rape, as was the case for the title character in ’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.50 In Ruth’s case death resulted from illness, and in Tess’s case death resulted by execution. Tess, like Lucretia, was raped, but unlike Lucretia she bore a child. Years later, on discovering Tess’s past, her new husband abandons her. In order to support her family she has no choice but to prostitute herself out to her rapist, whom she eventually murders. Tess tries to escape arrest, but is captured and hanged. Tess’s rape, although years before, sets in motion the events leading to her execution, despite her attempts to lead a ‘good’ life. Hetty, on the other hand, narrowly avoided death, but was nonetheless

47 Films about or featuring Anne Boleyn include Anne Boleyn (1920), directed by Ernst Lubitsch; The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), directed by Alexander Korda; Young Bess (1953), directed by ; Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), directed by Charles Jarrott; Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972), directed by Waris Hussein; and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), directed by Justin Chadwick. TV series include The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), directed by Naomi Capon and John Glenister; The Tudors (2007–2010), multiple directors; Wolf Hall (2015), directed by Peter Kosminsky; and there are too many literary portrayals to list here. 48 Susan Bordo, The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: New York, 2013) xii. 49 Bordo, The Creation of Anne Boleyn, xii. 50 Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Ruth, and Other Tales, 1853 (London: Smith, Elder, 1890); George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859 (London: Penguin, 2008); and Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, 1891 (London: MacMillan & Co., 1960).

68 transported.51 Regardless of the fates of these women, the message is the same: pre- or extra-marital relations—again, either consensual or non-consensual—mark each woman as impure, and precipitate her confinement or death. In ‘Rape, Seduction, Purity, and Shame in Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ Marcia Baron writes that Tess ‘knows the social importance attached to her female chastity and judges herself unfit for marriage (especially to a gentleman) because of the danger that her secret will be found out and her husband shamed by the discovery’.52

All of these offer some context for the characterisation of Lucretia in the opera. There, Lucretia understands the ‘social importance attached to her female chastity’, and ‘judges herself unfit’ as wife to Collatinus, a Roman consul and political leader. In other words, by living she apparently brings shame on her husband. Arnold Whittall regards the martyr Lucretia as possessing ‘exemplary… moral rectitude and physical fidelity’ in what he describes as a ‘pervasively corrupt culture’.53 While Britten and Duncan may not have been interested in highlighting the necessity of Lucretia’s tragic fate, there is no doubt that they aimed to portray this sexual exploitation as emblematic of sexual oppression. They sympathised with the fact that, although blameless, she had no choice but to die.

BRITTEN’S CASTING OF LUCRETIA The Rape of Lucretia, Britten’s second opera, premiered at Glyndebourne on 12 July 1946 to open the first post-war operatic season. It was also the first production for his newly formed . The opera was scored for eight singers and a small chamber orchestra (see Table 3.1). For the premiere, Britten cast some singers from Peter Grimes, including Peter Pears (Grimes) and (Ellen Orford). Kathleen Ferrier, who had never performed in opera, created the title role of Lucretia.54

51 George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859 (London: Penguin, 2008). 52 Marcia Baron, ‘Rape, Seduction, Purity, and Shame in Tess of the d’Urbervilles’, in Subversion and Sympathy: Gender, Law, and the British Novel, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Alison L. LaCroix (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2013) 129. 53 Arnold Whittall, ‘The Chamber Operas’, The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, edited by Mervyn Cooke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 112. 54 The Rape of Lucretia was the first of only two Britten operas with a woman in the title role, the other being (1955) composed for Joan Cross.

69

ROLE CHARACTER VOICE TYPE CAST ‘A’ CAST ‘B’ SINGER (12 July SINGER (13 July 1946) 1946) Lucretia wife of Collatinus contralto Kathleen Ferrier Nancy Evans Tarquinius son of Etruscan baritone Frank Rogier tyrant, Tarquinius Superbus Collatinus a Roman general bass Owen Norman Walker Brannigan Male Chorus commentator tenor Peter Pears Aksel Schiotz Female Chorus commentator soprano Joan Cross Flora Nielsen Junius a Roman General baritone Edmund Frederick Sharp Donlevy Bianca Lucretia’s nurse mezzo-soprano Anna Pollak Catherine Lawson Lucia Lucretia’s maid soprano Margaret Lesley Duff Ritchie

Table 3.1: Each role, character, voice type, and singer in The Rape of Lucretia, 12 & 13 July 1946.

By casting an oratorio rather than operatic singer as Lucretia, Britten was making a statement about the character. As Britten explained later, he wanted Ferrier’s ‘very grand personality. It was a noble something. It may have been stiff, it may have been at that moment a little bit reticent, but I knew that for Lucretia you couldn’t have a sexy dame, which Kathleen certainly wasn’t’. 55 Kildea in his criticisms of Britten’s casting misunderstands Britten’s motivation for choosing a contralto to sing Lucretia. The choice of voice-type alone says a lot about Britten’s perception of Lucretia’s character, and the choice to cast Ferrier says even more. Having never performed in opera Ferrier lacked a sexualised operatic past that, for other low-voiced female singers, would have included title roles in Bizet’s and Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila. Britten was literally deflowering Ferrier in the most violent way possible: by subjecting her ‘innocent’ character to violent, life- altering stage rape. Britten would have known that Ferrier had separated from her husband after a very short-lived marriage, and that she had no children.56 Lucretia’s violation was

55 Benjamin Britten, ‘Benjamin Britten recalls Kathleen’s singing of the role of Lucretia in his opera The Rape of Lucretia’, 1CD0154655, BLSA. 56 was annulled on grounds of unconsummation. Ian Jack, ‘Klever Kaff’, Granta 76 (Winter 2001): 112–14; and Rupert Christiansen, ‘The Glory of Klever Kaff’, Telegraph, 8 September 2003, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/3602169/The-glory-of-Klever-Kaff.html.

70 therefore all the more shocking when embodied by the virtuous, oratorio-singing contralto Kathleen Ferrier. This was not, as Kildea argues, a ‘tin-eared’ decision, but a calculated one.

In opera, each voice type is coded with meaning. Catherine Clément has briefly categorised each voice type to demonstrate how it is typically used in nineteenth-century opera and beyond. A soprano, she says, is the ‘persecuted victim’, tenor the voice of ‘courage and rebellion’, the baritone is ‘organized opposition’, mezzo-soprano the voice of ‘resistance, witchcraft and treason’, and basses and contraltos ‘verge on the divine’.57 Clément explains:

The spiritual power of the feminine voice is much more complicated. One version is heard in Erda’s contralto in the Ring: asleep in the depth of the world, the old Earth goddess is the prophetess par excellence. … However deep or bright they may be, the female voices that express spiritual power are always extreme, as if related to the physical state the ancient Greeks called hubris—a violent desire, supposedly inaccessible to humanity and strictly consecrated to the gods themselves. Whether deep or stratospheric, these voices verge on the divine.58

Clément qualifies her argument by stating that ‘no scheme that correlates voice types— soprano, tenor, baritone—and types of characters will apply to every opera in the repertory, but some generalisations are possible’.59 Nonetheless, Britten’s Lucretia fits into her system. Carolyn Abbate argues that ‘voice-type … is the common marker of gender and hence of position in the culture’.60 Ferrier’s voice, then, has the capacity to bridge the male–female voice-type divide, with inherent femininity at the top of her range and defiant masculinity at the bottom. Further, according to Mary Beard, in ancient literature ‘a low-pitched voice indicated manly courage, a high-pitched voice female cowardice’.61 While Lucretia is powerless to the monster Tarquinius, she wrests back some of that power with Ferrier’s low, authoritative voice type.

Many contralto roles, such as Orfeo in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, are castrato roles, and some are low mezzo-soprano roles. The contralto is more common in oratorio, such as in Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Dvořák’s Stabat Mater, Elgar’s Kingdom, and of course Handel’s Messiah.62 Nearly all the alto soloists in these oratorios are angels, such as in Elijah when the soloist is referred to as ‘Angel I’. Sometimes, as in opera, contraltos are interchangeable

57 Catherine Clément, ‘Through Voices, History’, in Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000) 22–25. 58 Clément, ‘Through Voices, History’, 24–25. 59 Clément, ‘Through Voices, History’, 22. 60 Carolyn Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993) 256. 61 Mary Beard, Women & Power: A Manifesto (London: London Profile Books, 2017) 19. 62 Clément gives only one example of a contralto in opera because there are so few examples to give.

71 with castrati or countertenors. Referencing James R. Kincaid, Harper-Scott argues that ‘Lucretia is presented as a childlike archetype’ by the ‘infantilising presentation’ of her body.63 Ferrier’s voice type takes this idea one step further: if Lucretia’s body is pure like a child’s, her voice is pure like a de-sexed angel’s. Using Ferrier’s voice, Britten declared Lucretia angelic and pure.

MUSIC FOR LUCRETIA Lucretia first appears one third of the way through the opera, in Act I, scene II, fig. 58. At home, accompanied by her nurse Bianca and maid Lucia, Lucretia is at her spinning wheel, yearning for her husband Collatinus.64 She is interrupted by a knock at the door and sends Lucia to find out who it is, hopeful that it will be her husband. After finding no one at the door, Lucia returns. Lucretia is sure she heard a knock, but Bianca insists that it was the beat of her heart. It is now late at night, and the women prepare themselves for bed. Soon after, however, all three women hear knocking. ‘It is too late for a messenger, and the knock was too loud for a friend’, the Female Chorus sings forebodingly. It is Tarquinius. ‘Open, in the name of the Prince of Rome’, he demands. Lucia unbolts the door, and he enters Lucretia’s house. He asks Lucretia for some wine, and claims that he has stopped by her house because his horse has been injured. Bianca and Lucia sense that Tarquinius is dangerous, and that he has ulterior motives for his visit. Lucretia leads him to his chamber for the night, and bids him goodnight.

Lucretia is now asleep in her chamber, and the Female Chorus describes her sleeping beauty. Tarquinius steals into the chamber, and seeing Lucretia asleep sings, ‘loveliness like this is never chaste’. He kisses her, and in her sleepy haze she thinks that he is Collatinus, and draws him closer. She wakes and, realising it is Tarquinius, cries, ‘what do you want?’. Tarquinius replies, ‘you’. A struggle ensues, as Lucretia repeatedly tells Tarquinius ‘no’ and that she belongs to Collatinus. Up until now, the tessitura of Lucretia’s part has remained relatively low, with only the occasional note between D5 and F♯5. Now her voice edges ever

65 higher, reaching G5 at fig. 37. Tarquinius draws a knife, and eventually overpowers Lucretia. An interlude follows, during which the rape occurs, unseen. The next morning, Lucia and Bianca greet each other, and exclaim, ‘Oh, what a lovely day!’. Bianca predicts

63 ‘One can see how in the ideological framework of the tale this desexualised representation of Lucretia should be appropriate. After all, by virtue of her marriage she is the sexual possession of Collatinus, her body cold, marmoreal, unresponsive to the touch of others’, Harper-Scott, ‘Britten’s Opera about Rape’, 72–73. 64 This is reminiscent of Schubert’s lied ‘’ (‘Margaret at the Spinning Wheel’), which Ferrier performed many times throughout her career. This may also be an allusion to Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, for whom she spent years weaving a shroud. 65 Benjamin Britten, The Rape of Lucretia: An Opera in Two Acts (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1946) 207: fig. 37.

72 that it will be hot and, ominously, ‘by evening it will thunder’. The gardener delivers fresh flowers from the garden—daffodils, white jasmine, eglantine, columbine, leaves of vine, and more—which they begin to arrange ‘royally’ for ‘Prince Tarquinius’. Bianca decides to ‘leave the orchids for Lucretia to arrange, Collatinus’ fav’rite flowers’. Lucretia enters, and Lucia and Bianca ask if she slept well. ‘As heavily as death’, she replies.

Bianca gives Lucretia a bunch of ‘the most perfect orchids’ she has ever seen—his lordship’s favourite, she reiterates—for Lucretia to arrange. They are, according to Bianca, the orchids that Lucretia has herself grown. Lucretia, who a moment before was in a trance- like state, reacts in shock (Example 8). She sings ‘Take them away, I tell you! Oh monstrous flower! O hideous hour!’. At this point Britten’s vocal writing for Lucretia sits quite high, calling on Ferrier to access a difficult part of her voice: the top of the stave, just above her upper . He uses these notes to illustrate her distress, such as when she was resisting Tarquinius’s advances, and now that she is forced to confront the horror of her rape. Lucretia’s extreme reaction to the sight of the orchids is underscored by the resultant emotionally overwrought sound of Ferrier’s voice in that tessitura.

This image is under copyright.

Example 8: Benjamin Britten, ‘Take them away, I tell you!’, The Rape of Lucretia: An Opera in Two Acts, fig. 69.

Lucretia’s horror at the sight of orchids (a flower that takes its name from the Greek word for testicle, and that in antiquity symbolised lust and fertility) is evidence of her

73 vulnerability and volatility following her rape.66 Harper-Scott claims that this allusion is Duncan’s attempt to assert his masculine control over the female Lucretia, a reference he suggests is intended for the sole interest of the ‘classically educated’ (therefore male) section of the audience.67 Lucretia is seemingly aware of the orchid’s symbolism, and assumes the flower represents her violation. The reference to orchids emphasises how cognizant Lucretia is of her situation: why else would she react so violently if she were unaware that orchids are a symbol of fertility? Not only that, the flowers that she has lovingly cultivated, and that are a favourite of her beloved husband’s, now remind her of the violent rape to which she has been subjected. Lucretia’s anger seems to be directed at herself, her husband, and Tarquinius—perhaps she is all too aware of the fate that awaits the fallen woman.

Lucretia bids Lucia to send for her husband, and asks her to ‘give him this orchid. Tell him I find its purity Apt; and that its petals contain woman’s pleasure and woman’s pain, and all of Lucretia’s shame’. ‘Give him this orchid’ (D♯—E—C♯—B) (Act 2, fig. 71 in the score) directly quotes Tarquinius when he demanded, ‘give me your lips’ (fig. 28 in the score). Lucretia’s vocal line rises to a climactic A5—her highest in the opera—which in 1946 was a particularly high note for Ferrier. Xin Ying Ch’ng argues that in writing an A5 into Ferrier’s vocal line Britten was unfairly stretching what is usually expected of a contralto, and therefore asserting himself as the sole (male) authorial voice in the opera.68 Yet she does not take into account the effect of Ferrier’s voice at the top of her range compared to her lower register. An alternative reading might find that Britten was not ‘overriding’ Ferrier’s range but instead manipulating her voice to display her vocal, and therefore physical and emotional, vulnerability. Britten placed great faith in his performers, and rarely composed something outside of their capability. In an interview he expressed what exactly he appreciated in Ferrier’s voice:

I loathe what is normally called a beautiful voice because to me it’s like an overripe peach which says nothing. And, Kathleen never had that. Even if she made mistakes, even if one could criticize her, her voice was always Kathleen. And the weaknesses in the voice were the

66 Harper-Scott, ‘Britten’s Opera about Rape’, 67. 67 Harper-Scott, ‘Britten’s Opera about Rape’, 67; and Mirella Levi d’Ancona, The Garden of the : Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1977) 277. 68 According to Xin Ying Ch’ng, ‘despite praising Ferrier for her unusual low quality, Britten’s scoring of the highest “A” and replacing it with a “F ♯”, Britten resorted to write an ossia of F♯, externally representing compliance with Ferrier. However, the inscription ‘ossia’ here signifies alternative and second-rate choices, usually meaning submission to an easier version. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine Ferrier regarding the ossia as a form of subtle oppression, pressurizing her to stretch herself physically. This can be viewed as Ferrier’s subjugation to Britten in recognizing his power and also his influence in the opera; hence, the composer ultimately gets what he wants’. See Xin Ying Ch’ng, ‘Kathleen Ferrier’s Voice and Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia’, Royal Music Association Research Students’ Conference, 3-5 January 2013, 1.

74 weaknesses in Kathleen, and the glories in the voice, which were, no need to say, were many, were the glories of Kathleen.69

Arguably, Britten did not view Ferrier’s vulnerability on her A5 as a ‘weakness’, but instead as one of her ‘glories’. Ferrier never admitted whether or not she struggled to sing that note, but in a German radio interview she did reveal that the opera was ‘most lovely, it’s very moving to sing, and very, very difficult because of these weird intervals that he [Britten] very often uses’.70

Lucretia kneels to arrange the flowers, and she begins to sing ‘Flowers bring to ev’ry year the same perfection’ (Example 9)—Lucretia’s main aria and the centrepiece of the role. She sings of the easily destroyed purity of flowers as an analogy for her own violation. The aria requires fine dramatic skills from the singer to sensitively portray the range of emotions—from desolation to anger—presented in the music. By asking this of his singer Britten is humanising Lucretia, emphasising that she is not just a pawn in an ancient Roman story, but that she is a feeling woman, and one who suffers.

Here, Ferrier’s voice must remain ‘still and noble’. The phrase is static, with a range of only a minor third, yet her repeated F is strangely at odds with the tonal centre of C (spelled out in the bass), resulting in a tonally ambiguous sound. The accompaniment repeats itself, obsessively, just as she repeats one single note as though in a daze. Does the repetitious bass line represent masculinity, in a further attempt to reemphasise her violation? Ferrier’s recording of the aria reveals a comfortable and assured sound at the bottom of her range, and a more vulnerable, but still beautiful, tone at the top of her range, 71 evident from the note D4. Such writing uncovers two sides to Ferrier’s voice: a comfortable, warm sound suited to oratorio when she is singing below D4, and an exciting, thinner sound as her voice moves towards her upper register (E5–F5).

69 Benjamin Britten, ‘Benjamin Britten sums up the qualities of her voice’, 1CD0154655, BLSA. 70 Kathleen Ferrier, ‘Kathleen Ferrier radio interview with Eric McLean’, 3 October 1950, Montreal, 1CD0298196, BLSA. 71 Benjamin Britten, ‘Flowers bring to ev’ry year the same perfection’, The Rape of Lucretia, English Opera Group Orchestra, Reginald Goodall with Kathleen Ferrier, Edmund Donleavy, Otakar Kraus, , Anna Pollak, Joan Cross, Margaret Ritchie, recorded 2 October 1946, Gala GL 100.560, 2000, 2 compact discs.

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Example 9: Britten, ‘Flowers bring to ev’ry year the same perfection’, Rape of Lucretia, Act 2, fig. 75.

Eventually, Collatinus arrives with Junius, and, dressed in ‘purple mourning’, Lucretia slowly approaches them. Solemnly, she tells Collatinus of her rape at the hands of

Tarquinius. In a recitative that sits on a B3 (Example 10), she sings,

Last night Tarquinius ravished me And took his peace from me And tore the fabric of our love. What we had woven Tarquinius has broken. What I have spoken can never be forgotten.72 Each phrase is accompanied only by sustained, muted strings, so the singer does not have to be heard over prominent orchestral writing (Example 11). This would not have been a problem for Ferrier who, as Britten noted, was able to project her voice when singing in this low register.73 Ferrier’s voice was unusual for its low resonance and its ability to fill a theatre where another female singer could not. Britten used that ‘exciting’, strong sound at the crucial moment in the opera: the suicide scene.74

If Britten used Ferrier’s upper register to depict Lucretia’s distress, he used her low register to depict resolve. The emotional effect of that music is considerable: again, Lucretia’s repeated notes speak of her distraught state. However, this time the notes are at the bottom of her range, suggesting that Lucretia has reached the depths of her despair.

72 Duncan, Lucretia, 288–289, fig. 87. 73 Benjamin Britten, ‘The Singer and the Person: A Portrait of a Well-Loved Person’, BBC Records, REGL 368, 1979. 74 Britten, ‘The Singer and the Person’.

76 And without accompaniment Lucretia is completely alone: she is alone in her grief, she alone knows that she is about to take her own life, underscored by the fact that she—in this moment at least—is musically alone.75

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Example 10: Britten, ‘Last night Tarquinius ravished me’, Rape of Lucretia, Act 2, bar before fig. 87.

75 Drawing a connection between Lucretia and the alto solos in Messiah, the tessitura in this particular moment is similar to the tessitura of the aria ‘He was despised’ in Messiah. It is unusual that Britten uses Ferrier’s low register to at the moment of her suicide. He goes against the general operatic convention, which is to employ high, dramatic singing to portray the violence of suicide. For example, in Puccini’s , Cio-Cio- San’s vocal line in her final aria ‘Con onor muore’ (‘Death with honour’) is virtuosically high. Similarly, in Handel’s La Lucrezia, the vocal line impetuously rises as Lucretia swears her revenge before killing herself. Before Dido kills herself in , she sings the famous aria ‘When I am laid in earth’, which features a repeated G5 to the words ‘Remember me!’. Perhaps the most famous and dramatic example is Brünnhilde’s almost twenty-minute long Immolation Scene in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. The role of Brünnhilde is one of the most challenging in the repertoire, and that demanding final scene is arguably the pinnacle of operatic achievement.

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In her recording of the recitative, Ferrier sings the repeated B3s in a soft, almost spoken, tone while still maintaining presence and authority. Just as she stabs herself, Lucretia’s vocal line rises to a magnificent fortissimo G5 (Example 11), before—impressively—finally landing a tenth lower on E3 (Example 12) five bars later. Ferrier’s G5 and E3 are accurately in tune and secure in her voice, despite the fact that over the course of eight bars she sings in a range that spans almost two and a half octaves, and in a lower tessitura than for the average low-voiced female singer. The exceptionally wide range of Lucretia’s vocal line confirms Britten’s faith in Ferrier’s abilities—especially considering that, although a lot of the music in this section is in a similar range to Ferrier’s other repertoire, the G5 and E3 are at the outer extremities of her high and low registers.

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Example 11: Britten, ‘Now I’ll be forever chaste’, Rape of Lucretia, Act 2, bar before fig. 94.

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Example 12: Britten, ‘Washes my shame away’, Rape of Lucretia, Act 2, six bars after fig. 94.

USE OF THE TWO CASTS Two casts performed the opening season—cast ‘A’ and cast ‘B’. The singers performing in cast A (opening night cast) were the singers for whom Britten composed each role. Crozier explained that ‘double-casting … was forced on the group during its first season by the necessity of giving seven performances each week’.76 According to Britten, it was Ferrier who suggested mezzo-soprano Nancy Evans (1915–2000) as the alternate Lucretia.77

There are extant recordings of both Ferrier (cast A) and Evans (cast B) singing the title role, allowing for a comparative study of the first Lucretias.78 The two recordings of ‘Flowers bring to ev’ry year’ reveal very different interpretations of the role. Evans’s voice lacks the roundness and warmth of Ferrier’s, and instead has higher resonances and a brighter colour. Evans’s low notes are not quite as full as Ferrier’s, and the final A3 and B3 at fig. 77, while sung in an almost style, lack the presence of Ferrier’s.

Similarly, when Evans sings the repeated F4 both at the beginning (fig. 75) and end (three bars before fig. 77) of the aria, her intonation is less accurate than Ferrier’s, and her voice wavers slightly. This is perhaps owing to Evans’s lighter tone, which, in this slightly

76 Eric Crozier, ‘Lucretia—1946’, in The Rape of Lucretia (London: Bodley Head, 1948) 58–59. 77 Benjamin Britten, ‘Three Premieres’ (1954), in Britten on Music, ed. Paul Kildea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 123. 78 Benjamin Britten, The Rape of Lucretia, English Opera Group Chamber Orchestra, Sir Reginald Goodall, with Nancy Evans et al, recorded July/October, 1947, EMI Classics 7 64727 2, 1993, 2 compact discs; Britten, The Rape of Lucretia, with Ferrier, 1946.

79 distorted 1947 recording, has the effect of sounding marginally sharp. Ferrier, on the other hand, sings the F4 with consistency, and, despite the even older (and, accordingly, somewhat distorted) recording, with precise intonation and without the uncertain waver in her voice.

On the other hand, Evans reaches her top notes with much ease, such as the A5 in the bar before fig. 73. Ferrier’s top notes, while accurate, are somewhat less controlled. This does not detract from Ferrier’s performance or sound like a vocal defect—instead, it heightens the drama and uncertainty, and works well as a dramatic device, giving voice to Lucretia’s anger and disbelief following her rape. Britten commented that

Vocally [Ferrier] was always secure, although the violent hysterics of and the short transition to the long, soft line of the Flower Song in the last scene of all had to be ‘managed’ and to be studied carefully under the devoted guidance of the conductor, .79

Unlike Evans, Ferrier’s deeper voice brought nobility, stillness, vulnerability, weight, and— occasionally—hysteria to the role of Lucretia. Evans, while still capable, did not possess a voice with the same unusual characteristics, and her interpretation does not have the same emotional range.

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Figure 8: Kathleen Ferrier as Lucretia, Anna Pollak as Bianca, and Margaret Ritchie as Lucia, ‘Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn’, Les Films de la Memoire, accessed 16 April 2018, http://lesfilmsx.cluster014.ovh.net/wordpress/en/kathleen-ferrier/.

79 Benjamin Britten, ‘Three Premieres’, in Kathleen Ferrier: A Memoir, ed. Neville Cardus (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1954) 55.

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RECEPTION Ferrier was almost universally praised for her interpretation of Lucretia (Figure 8). Whether consciously or not critics identified the very same qualities that Britten valued in Ferrier, and she was variously praised as noble, dignified, and lovely. The critic for the Hampstead News referred to Ferrier as a ‘heroine of great dignity and splendid voice’.80 In Stage, Ferrier was unusually criticised for the appropriateness of her voice in that role, although the criticism was more a reflection of Britten’s score rather than Ferrier’s voice: ‘Kathleen Ferrier sang with a fine spaciousness as Lucretia, though one felt that the music was a little too spare for the emotional warmth of her tone’.81 In some newspapers Ferrier’s performance was regarded as the overall highlight, and the Scotsman’s music critic declared ‘Vocally, the most striking performance was given by Kathleen Ferrier as Lucretia. It was a really magnificent study’.82 A reviewer for the Times was aware of Britten’s unusual casting and commented, ‘A contralto heroine is unconventional, but in Miss Kathleen Ferrier the opera had a protagonist who was able without strain to present tragedy with a splendid voice and great dignity of bearing’.83 Similarly, another press notice in observed that the opera ‘provides in Miss Kathleen Ferrier the unusual spectacle of a contralto heroine’.84

Evans, while commended, did not receive the same attention as Ferrier. For example, a review in Manchester Guardian listed Evans as one of the many good performers in the cast, rather than singling her out for praise.85 The review simply stated that ‘Last night Miss Evans and her colleagues, Miss Catherine Lawson, Miss Lesley Duff, Miss Flora Nielson, and Messrs. Aksel Schiotz, Norman Walker, Edmund Donlevy, and Frank Rogier, sang and acted excellently’. 86 In contrast, that same Manchester Guardian critic later emphasised his appreciation of Ferrier’s performance in the role, and described how ‘Miss Ferrier can always bring dramatic force and passion to her singing, but it was in the nuances of the soft notes that she excelled during the heroine’s pathetic last scenes’. 87 He further noted that during this performance ‘in one or two scenes the dramatic quality of the opera was heightened and there was a stronger sense of tension and of foreboding in the approach to

80 ‘The Rape of Lucretia: Glyndebourne’, Hampstead News, 18 July 1946, clipping in KFA. 81 ‘Glyndebourne: The Rape of Lucretia’, Stage, 18 July 1946, clipping in KFA. 82 ‘Glyndebourne Opera: The Rape of Lucretia: Britten’s New Work’, 13 July 1946, clipping in KFA. 83 Times, July 1946, clipping in KFA. 84 ‘Glyndebourne Again’, Sunday Times, 14 July 1946, clipping in KFA. 85 G.A.H., ‘Opera House: The Rape of Lucretia’, Manchester Guardian, 3 July 1946: 3. 86 G.A.H., ‘Opera House: The Rape of Lucretia’. 87 G.A.H., ‘The Rape of Lucretia’, Manchester Guardian, 1946, clipping in KFA.

81 tragedy’.88 When comparing the two Lucretias, in the Times review of a 1948 recording with Evans as Lucretia, the critic lamented, ‘It is a pity that Miss Ferrier does not sing the part of Lucretia, since Miss Nancy Evans does not carry the same dramatic conviction, although she does sing acceptably enough’.89 While Britten’s score was generally praised, occasional criticisms were meted out to Duncan for his ‘awkward’ and ‘workmanlike’ libretto.90 Overall, despite it being a new opera, The Rape of Lucretia was well received, and it raised the profile of Kathleen Ferrier from oratorio singer to operatic soloist.

RECENT INTERPRETATIONS In the seventy years since the opera’s premiere some have questioned Lucretia’s virtue. In an undated interview with Humphrey Carpenter, for example, notable Lucretia interpreter Janet Baker cast doubt over the character’s innocence, arguing ‘If she weren’t in danger of his sexuality she wouldn’t be frightened. If she had been emotionally uninvolved, she wouldn’t have felt guilty after the rape’.91 When performed the role at Snape Maltings in 2001, her body language towards Christopher Maltman’s Tarquinius was sometimes more sensual than scared.92 In 2009 the Danish Royal Opera mounted a production based on Britten’s initial version of the score, and in this production apparently there was no rape, just sex.93 According to Michael White’s review in Opera Now, ‘Britten’s opera has always invited speculation that Lucretia may not be raped at all. Perhaps her bedroom business with Tarquinius is consensual. Perhaps that’s really why she kills herself’.94 More recently, in 2015, Glyndebourne mounted its first production there since the opera’s premiere. A review by Rupert Christiansen in the Telegraph features an image of Lucretia straddling Tarquinius (Figure 9).

88 G.A.H., ‘The Rape of Lucretia’, Manchester Guardian. 89 ‘The Gramophone: Britten and Stravinsky’, Times, 30 March 1948: 8. 90 ‘Stage and Screen’, Evening Argus, Brighton, 16 July 1946, clipping in KFA; and ‘At Glyndebourne: The Rape of Lucretia’, Stage, 18 July 1946, clipping in KFA. 91 Janet Baker, quoted in Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 235. Fear and guilt are both common reactions experienced by many victims of rape. See Monash Health, ‘Feelings After Sexual Assault’, South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault & Family Violence leaflet (13 May 2013): https://www.secasa.com.au/assets/Documents/feelings-after-sexual-assault.pdf 92 Benjamin Britten, The Rape of Lucretia and , conducted by Paul Daniel, directed by David McVicar, with Sarah Connolly, and Christopher Maltman et al., Opus Arte, 2001, 1 digital video disc. For example, when Tarquinius is with Lucretia in her chamber, he continuously gropes her covered and then naked breast, while she does not appear to resist. 93 In 1947 Britten revised parts of the score. 94 Michael White, ‘Copenhagen: The Rape of Lucretia’, Opera Now 20 (July/August 2009): 62.

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Figure 9: Christine Rice as Lucretia and Duncan Rock as Tarquinius, photograph by David Cooper, in Rupert Christiansen, ‘The Rape of Lucretia, Glyndebourne, Review: ‘Piercingly Intelligent and Immaculately Realised’’, Telegraph, 6 July 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/glyndebourne/11716565/The-Rape-of- Lucretia-Glyndebourne-review-piercingly-intelligent-immaculately-realised.html.

Christiansen concluded that Lucretia’s ‘suicide seems more the result of her guilt than her innocence’. 95 Do directors believe that Lucretia was secretly complicit, or are they sensationalising the opera in order to sell their production to audiences? Following the #MeToo movement, would a scurrilous depiction of Lucretia be acceptable in 2018? Such interpretations play to the view that a woman is somehow responsible for her rape, either because of her beauty, her dress, or her own unacknowledged desires. To portray Lucretia as in any way wanton is surely at odds with Britten’s intentions and his conception of the role as it was intended for Ferrier.

CONCLUSION Both the voice and the personality of Kathleen Ferrier informed the way Britten conceived the role of Lucretia and composed the vocal line. While it may have seemed unusual to cast a low-voiced singer in the role, Britten had good reason for choosing Ferrier. He did not want just anybody—for example, a stock —to portray his noble heroine; he wanted a transcendent Lucretia whose abilities went far beyond the realm of everyday

95 Rupert Christiansen, ‘The Rape of Lucretia, Glyndebourne, Review: Piercingly Intelligent, Immaculately Realised’, Telegraph (6 July 2015) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/glyndebourne/11716565/The- Rape-of-Lucretia-Glyndebourne-review-piercingly-intelligent-immaculately-realised.html.

83 operatic singing. Britten wanted a singer out of the ordinary: Ferrier, cast A Lucretia, was extraordinary; whereas Evans, cast B Lucretia, was a comparatively mainstream opera singer. Ferrier provided Britten with the qualities he so desired. From her personal history, to her professional oratorio experience and her operatic inexperience, Ferrier was vocally and dramatically equipped to convincingly portray a woman violated by a sexual predator. Britten needed a singer who could truly embody Lucretia, and with whom his audiences could sympathise. He wanted to portray the absolute pointlessness of violence, and he did so by casting a singer who, publicly and privately, was the embodiment of innocence. Nowadays, to cast Lucretia as in any way complicit is to miss the point of Britten’s intentions. It is also at odds with the noble and dignified character that Ferrier initially created.

While Britten was playing to the common operatic trope of the wronged woman who must die—or, as Catherine Clément describes, portraying the ‘infinitely repetitive spectacle of a woman who dies’—the score reveals how he wrote a role that only Ferrier could accurately and convincingly create on stage.96 Britten wrote Ferrier’s voice into the score, and as her recordings demonstrate she was ‘critical in authoring the work as an audible reality’.97 The uniqueness in her sound—both at the top of her register and at the bottom— was essential to fully portray Lucretia’s shocking violation, and her human reaction to it.

The brilliant sound of Ferrier’s voice as she reaches up to that difficult A5—even though

Britten wrote ossia F♯5 in the score—is an example of her ‘supplanting’ the ‘specifically male position’ of the author (in this case Britten, the composer) with her ‘overtly female musical force’.98 As Britten himself said, ‘as soon as the curtain went up, one realised that this was Lucretia’.99

96 Catherine Clément, Opera, Or, the Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (London: Tauris, 1997) 47. 97 Carolyn Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 255. 98 Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, 232. 99 Benjamin Britten, quoted in Kathleen Ferrier: An Ordinary Diva, directed by Suzanne Phillips (Decca, 2004), DVD.

84 Chapter 4

‘Her beautiful dark voice’: Alto solos in Spring Symphony

Benjamin Britten’s Spring Symphony—the second of his compositions that included music for Kathleen Ferrier—depicts a pastoral Englishness that seemed to have been all but destroyed by World War Two. At that time, Britten was among many artists who, through art, wanted to create something ‘absolute and untrammelled’ that would ‘rise above’ the post-war decay of England.1 He imagined the work as a ‘particularly lovely Spring day in East Suffolk’ like ‘the Suffolk of Constable and Gainsborough’, and intended to write ‘a symphony not dealing with Spring itself, but with the progress of Winter to Spring, and the re-awakening of the earth and life which that means’.2 Not only did Britten depict the spring of the county to which he was so attached, by setting W.H. Auden’s disquieting poem ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’ he politicised his music to demonstrate the senseless destruction to his land caused by war. Like in the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, as Tim Barringer explains, Britten blended ‘nostalgic reassurance with existential disquiet, rootedness and alienation, escapism and engagement’.3 Conflating pastoral imagery with images of war was, according to , typical of mid-twentieth-century art. Tippett later wrote that ‘the pastoral idyll’ was ‘an essential counterbalance to the horrors of the trenches’.4

Britten composed Spring Symphony between 1948 and 1949, completing it in June 1949.5 Although commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky for performance by the Boston Symphony at the Tanglewood Music Festival, Spring Symphony premiered at the Holland Festival on 9

1 Alexandra Harris, Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination of Virginia Woolf and John Piper (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2010) 12. 2 Benjamin Britten, ‘A Note on Spring Symphony’, Music Survey 2, no. 4 (Spring 1950): 237, reprinted in Britten on Music, ed. Paul Kildea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 374. (1898–1989) was a leading Dutch soprano, who retired from the concert stage in 1953. Benjamin Britten voiced doubts about her in his letters (Letters From a Life 3: 509–510), but she successfully premiered the solo soprano part during the first performances. 3 Tim Barringer, ‘I Am Native, Rooted Here: Benjamin Britten, Samuel Palmer, and the Neo-Romantic Pastoral’, Art History 31, no. 1 (February 2011): 135. 4 Michael Tippett, quoted in Barringer, ‘I Am Native, Rooted Here’, 59. 5 Mitchell, Letters From a Life 3: 521.

85 July 1949, and the American premiere took place the following month.6 Composed for soloists Jo Vincent (soprano), Kathleen Ferrier (contralto), Peter Pears (tenor), boys’ choir, mixed chorus, and orchestra, in Spring Symphony Britten employed the ‘biggest apparatus’ he had used to date.7

Spring Symphony is in four parts, and each part is divided into shorter sections. Britten described the four sections of Spring Symphony as ‘bound together by a similar mood or point of view’, which he set out as follows:

Thus after an introduction, which is a prayer, in Winter, for Spring to come, the first movements deal with the arrival of Spring, the cuckoo, the birds, the flowers, the sun and ‘May month’s beauty’; the second movements paint the darker side of Spring—fading violets, rain and night; the third is a series of dances, the love of young people; the fourth is a May-day Festival, of a bank holiday, which ends with the great thirteenth-century traditional song ‘Sumer is i-cumen in’, sung or rather shouted by the boys.8

He set the work of fourteen English poets from various eras (Table 4.1). Britten’s selection of poetry all but excludes nineteenth-century poets, focussing instead on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with only one twentieth-century inclusion.9 While composing Spring Symphony, he wrote in a letter to Pears,

My work is going better, but I’m up against quite a snorter of a formal problem now. I’ve sketched it out already—the Winter one (Orch. & Chorus) the Spenser (3 trumpets & you!), the Nashe (everyone), the Clare driving-boy (with soprano solo), a Herrick Violet (for Kathleen), and a lovely Vaughan one about a shower for you. And now … well, we’ll see— lots of possibilities; I’d better get it all neatly planned, but it’s now coming out different, bigger (& I hope better!).10

Thus the choice of singer was integral to the overall conception of the work, and the choice of poem went hand in hand with the choice of singer.

6 Serge Koussevitsky (1874–1951), Russian-born conductor, composer, and double-bassist. 7 Erwin Stein, ‘Britten’s Spring Symphony’, Tempo 15 (Spring 1950): 19. 8 Britten, ‘A Note on the Spring Symphony’, Britten on Music, 374. 9 Sourced from the following poetry books in Britten’s collection: William Stanley Braithwaite, ed., The Book of Elizabethan Verse (London: Chatto & Windus, 1908); Francis Turner Palgrave, ed., The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language (London: Oxford University Press, 1919); Rostrevor Hamilton, ed., The Latin Portrait: An Anthology (London: Nonesuch Press, 1929); Horatius Flaccus, The Odes and Epodes, trans. C.E. Bennett (London: William Heinemann, 1934); Sir Edmund K. Chambers, ed., The Oxford Book of Sixteenth-Century Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942); Richard Barnfield, The Poems of Richard Barnfield (London: Fortune Press, 1936); and W.H. Auden, Look, Stranger! (London: Faber & Faber, 1936). 10 Benjamin Britten, letter to Peter Pears, 5 November 1948, in Letters from a Life, 3: 456.

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Poem Poet Dates Voices Duration Part 1 ‘Shine out’ Anon. 16th century mixed chorus 8′28″ ‘Merry cuckoo’ Edmund Spenser 1552/1553– tenor solo 1′59″ 1599 ‘Spring, the sweet spring’ Thomas Nashe 1567–c.1601 tenor solo 1′44″ ‘The driving boy’ George Peel /John 1556–1596 / soprano solo and 2′02″ Clare 1793–1864 boys’ choir ‘The Morning Star’ John Milton 1608–1574 mixed chorus 2′59″ Part 2 ‘Welcome, Maids of Robert Herrick 1591–1674 alto solo 2′45″ Honour’ ‘Waters above’ Henry Vaughan 1621–1695 tenor solo 2′34″ ‘Out on the lawn I lie in W.H. Auden 1907–1973 alto solo 6′13″ bed’ Part 3 ‘When will my May come’ Richard Barnefield 1574–1620 tenor solo 2′27″ ‘Fair and fair’ George Peele 1556–1596 soprano and tenor 2′22″ soli ‘Sound the Flute!’ 1757–1827 male chorus, 1′29″ female chorus and boys’ choir Part 4 ‘London, to thee I do John Beaumont / 1584–1616 / soprano, alto and 8′06″ present the merry month Francis Fletcher 1579–1625 tenor soli, mixed of May’ chorus and boys’ choir

Table 4.1: Poem, poet, soloists, and approximate movement durations in Spring Symphony.

For Ferrier, Britten composed two solos—both in Part 2—setting the poetry of Robert Herrick and W.H. Auden.11 Part 2 is Spring Symphony’s slow movement, opening with Herrick’s ‘Welcome, maids of honour’, and closing with the unsettling eighth stanza of Auden’s poem ‘Out on the lawn’. Ferrier’s solos bookend the tenor solo, ‘Waters above’. The first, at around 2′45″, is similar in length to other solos in Spring Symphony, and the second, ‘Out on the lawn’, is the longest solo (Ferrier’s recording of this comes in at 6′13″), making it the centrepiece of the work.12

11 Britten had a copy of Auden’s 1939 poetry collection Look, Stranger! (London: Faber & Faber), in which ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’—also referred to as Summer Night—was first published. 12 Benjamin Britten, Spring Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Choir, Boys Chorus of the St. Willibrord Church, with Kathleen Ferrier, Peter Pears, Jo Vincent, recorded 9 July 1949, Decca 4783589, 2012, 14 compact discs.

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SPRING-THEMED VOCAL MUSIC Britten’s ‘spring’ music for Ferrier is different to other spring-themed vocal instrumental music. Ferrier’s contralto voice type alone is atypical of the genre.13 In his extended epitaph to Ferrier, Britten gave his only explanation for choosing Ferrier for the Auden poem:

I had Kathleen very much in mind when I wrote the long, serious setting of a poem by W.H. Auden, which is the central piece of the work. Her beautiful dark voice and serious mien, together with her impeccable intonation, made a great impression in this sombre movement.14

Spring-themed vocal music—such as Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (Shepherd on the Rock), Johann Strauss’s Frühlingsstimmen (Voices of Spring), and Richard Strauss’s Frühling from Vier Letzte Lieder (‘Spring’ from Four Last Songs)—is often composed for high voice (usually with a capacity for coloratura), rather than for low-voiced female singers.15 Rebirth is often a theme in this repertoire, which is associated with youth, and, in terms of vocal singing, high, light and fresh voices.16 Musically, Spring Symphony is more similar to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth), which deals with both autumn and spring (but is not dedicated specifically to spring), and is composed for a high-voiced singer and a low-voiced singer (usually a combination of tenor and baritone, or tenor and contralto).17 Donald Mitchell and Paul Kildea have both considered the Mahler work ‘a neat comparison’ for its structure and orchestration, drawing a connection between it and the philosophy of renewal underpinning Spring Symphony.18

A brief look at Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen illuminates the way in which the voice has typically been used in ‘spring’ music. Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is composed for high voice, clarinet and piano, and average performance duration is approximately twelve minutes. Schubert set the work of two poets: Wilhelm Müller and Rahel Varnhagen. Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is in three sections, charting the course of the shepherd’s—the protagonist— emotions as he first looks down into valley and sings, hearing the echo of his voice

13 Britten still did employ two high-voiced singers, tenor and soprano, but his solos for the low-voiced singer were unusual. 14 Britten, Three Premieres, ed. Neville Cardus, 57–58. 15 Der Hirt auf dem Felsen D. 965 is a lied for soprano, clarinet and piano, composed 1828. Frühlingsstimmen, Op. 410 is an orchestral waltz, with optional soprano solo, composed 1882. Vier Letzte Lieder, Op. posth., is a collection of songs for soprano and orchestra, composed 1948. 16 Other ‘spring’ music, which is not necessarily vocal music, includes Beethoven’s ‘Spring’ sonata for piano and violin, Schumann’s Spring Symphony, Mendelssohn’s ‘Spring Song’ from Lieder ohne worte, ‘Spring’ from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (), which is much more aggressive than the other listed works. 17 Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, composed between 1908 and 1909, is for two voices and orchestra. 18 Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century (London: Penguin, 2014) 330.

88 reverberate through the great chasm. He longs for his beloved to return, then laments his loneliness, and finally anticipates the coming of spring. Voice and clarinet are in duet, alongside lengthy solo clarinet passages, while the piano plays a predominantly accompanying role. The vocal line is virtuosic, requiring both slow legato and fast coloratura singing, and wide jumps of up to a tenth. The third section (dedicated to spring) is marked allegretto, and is full of fast coloratura runs (some chromatic) in duet with the clarinet. Here, the text is full of optimism for spring.

Der Frühling will kommen, The springtime will come, Der Frühling, meine Freud’, The springtime, my joy, Nun mach’ ich mich fertig Now I prepare myself Zum Wandern bereit.19 For the journey.20

Clarinet

Soprano

Piano

Example 13: Franz Schubert, ‘Der Frühling will kommen’, Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, 1828, bars 318–323.

The major tonality of the Allegretto section, the quick tempo, and the upward scalic runs in both the clarinet and vocal lines create a feeling of excitement and anticipation. The high, fast nature of the vocal line is best suited to a high and light voice capable of singing short,

repeated high B♭5s (Example 13). For these reasons, the overall atmosphere—created by tempo, tonality, and combination of instruments—of Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is at odds with Britten’s music for Kathleen Ferrier in Spring Symphony, which is comparatively less athletic and less optimistic. Britten may well have had Der Hirt auf dem Felsen on his mind when working on Spring Symphony—according to correspondence he went to a

19 Willhelm Müller, from Liebesgedanken, 1826. 20 Translated by Bard Suverkrop, IPA Source, accessed 10 July 2017, https://www-ipasource- com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/der-hirt-auf-dem-felsen-7493.html.

89 performance of the work, given by Margaret Ritchie, in December 1947.21 If Der Hirt auf dem Felsen is the benchmark for composing vocal music on the theme of spring, Britten deviated wildly and reinterpreted the framework for such repertoire.

‘WELCOME MAIDS OF HONOUR’ Even if Herrick’s poem To Violets seems a conventionally ‘spring’-like choice for Britten’s Spring Symphony, the reference to violets has dark undertones.22 In England, violets are the first flowers to appear at the beginning of spring, and in art and poetry they are often associated with death because of their short lifespan.23 In Herrick’s poetry, according to his biographer George Walton Scott, ‘the decaying of fruits, flowers, blossoms, the fate of all animate objects is a constant reminder of the morality of man and particularly the passing beauty of women’.24 In Shakespeare’s , Laertes described the transient nature of the violet as ‘in the youth of primy nature, / Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, / The perfume and suppliance of a minute; / No more’.25 Shakespeare also frequently mentioned violets in reference to death, such as in Hamlet when Ophelia says, ‘I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died’.26 After Ophelia dies, Laertes cries ‘lay her i’ th’ earth, and from her fair and unpolluted flesh my violets spring!’.27 Violets were a symbol of mourning and were often chosen to scatter on graves.28 The text of Mozart’s lied ‘Abendempfindung’, which is about the premonition of death, refers to violets on the grave: ‘Und plfücke mir ein Vielchen auf mein Grab’ (‘and pluck for me a small violet for my grave’), and Das Vielchen refers to a modest violet who dies after a young maid treads on it.29 Because of its nodding head, in Christian iconography violets further symbolised modesty and humility.30

21 Letters From a Life 3: 345. 22 For Ferrier Britten previously set a text about flowers in The Rape of Lucretia. The aria ‘Flowers bring to ev’ry year’ similarly alludes to the transient nature of youth and beauty. 23 Jessica Kerr and Anne Ophelia Dowden, Shakespeare’s Flowers (London: Longman, 1969) 46. 24 George Walton Scott, Robert Herrick (Sidgwick and Jackson Limited: Great Britain, 1974) 116. 25 , Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3, quoted in Kerr and Dowden, Shakespeare’s Flowers, 46. 26 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974) 898. 27 Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1, 903. 28 Celia Fisher, Flowers of the Renaissance (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getter Museum, 2011) 139. 29 Joachim Heinrich Campe, Abendempfindung (1783), trans. Bard Suverkrop 2007, IPA Source, accessed 30 March 2018, https://www-ipasource-com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/abendempfindung-6994.html; and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Das Veilchen (1773–74), trans. Bard Suverkrop 2008, IPA Source, accessed 30 March 2018, https://www-ipasource-com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/das-veilchen-ein-veilchen.html. 30 Margaret Willes, The Pick of the Bunch: the Story of Twelve Treasured Flowers (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2009)145.

90 Britten’s vocal writing in ‘Welcome Maids of Honour’ transforms the typical low, round and warm contralto sound into something lighter and brighter. In her recording Ferrier approaches the opening lines of the aria with lightness in her voice: ‘Welcome Maids of Honour, / You doe bring / In the spring / And wait upon her’ (Example 14).31

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Example 14: Benjamin Britten, ‘Welcome Maids of Honour’, Spring Symphony, 1949, bars 4– 7.

Ferrier’s first entry sits on D5 in her upper passaggio, and she modifies her usually rich voice to produce a narrower sound.32 The first vowel of ‘Welcome’—<ɛ> in phonetics—is an open-mid front unrounded vowel.33 The phonetic symbols for the ‘ai’ in ‘Wait’ of the following line are , which is a combination of a near-close near-front unrounded vowel followed by a close-mid front unrounded vowel (in other words, they are forward vowels).34

31 While Ferrier did not make a formal recording of Spring Symphony, a recording of a rehearsal surfaced in 1994. 32 D5 is generally the upper passaggio point for the contralto voice. Sandra Cotton, ‘Voice Classification and : Recent, Historical and Conflicting Systems of Voice Categorisation’, DMA thesis, University of North Carolina and Greensboro, 2007, 20. 33 Collins Dictionary of the English Language, 1st ed. (1979), s.v. ‘welcome’. 34 Collins Dictionary, s.v. ‘wait’; and ‘The International Phonetic Alphabet’, International Phonetic Association, accessed 29 March 2018, https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/sites/default/files/IPA_Kiel_2015.pdf.

91 Both ‘Wel’ and ‘Wait’ on D5 are difficult for a contralto, because, as bright vowels on the passaggio, they require a degree of modification in order to produce a clear sound without being weighted down by the natural heaviness of the voice. The vocal line at that point also features a number of upward quaver intervals of a fourth or greater on a single word at the end of each phrase: ‘you do bring in the spring’. That motif, coupled with the use of the bright ‘Welcome’ and ‘Wait’ on D5 illustrate Herrick’s text to suggest new violet blossoms bursting from the late-winter soil. Because Ferrier had to narrow her sound in order to accommodate the vowels on these notes, it also hints at the voice’s—and therefore the violet’s—potential blossom. Not only does Britten illustrate Herrick’s words with interval and pitch patterns, his vocal writing requires Ferrier to modify her singing voice to its finest core, which is an unusual and unexpected use of a contralto voice.

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Example 15: Britten, ‘Welcome Maids of Honour’, Spring Symphony, bars 29–32.

Variations of the upward quaver pattern in Example 14 continue throughout the solo until the final section beginning at fig. 2, bar 27. At that point, Herrick’s violets—although the freshest and the fairest, retaining their grace when compared to beautiful roses—remain neglected and untouched: ‘Yet, though thus respected, / By and by / Ye doe lie, / Poore

92 girls neglected’. Ferrier’s voice has returned to its most comfortable range, and sounds dark and luscious. The highest note is now A4, and the lowest is an octave below at G♯3. Up until that point, Britten purposefully set vowels on notes that discouraged Ferrier’s voice from sounding at its fullest. At bar 31 (Example 15) the quaver motive has been extended to reach a minor seventh, requiring Ferrier to move between chest and head voice.

As previously explained, her voice is possibly at its richest below the stave, where it audibly retains its full resonance. Britten repeats the final word, ‘neglected’, the only time in the movement that he modified Herrick’s poem, and he uses Ferrier’s naturally low timbre to underscore the flower’s inevitable demise (Example 16). For once, Britten’s music is typical of that for contralto, and the sound is more relaxed in Ferrier’s voice.

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Example 16: Britten, ‘Welcome Maids of Honour’, Spring Symphony, bars 36–39.

Britten provided a relatively straightforward setting of Herrick’s poem, initially highlighting the potential lightness of Ferrier’s unique vocal timbre to depict fresh violets bursting from the soil, slowly transitioning to the darkest and most luscious part of

93 Ferrier’s voice in a final lament for the sad fate of those pretty and optimistic flowers.35 Despite that tricky vocal writing, Ferrier complied and modified her voice to produce a clean and bright sound. One argument could be that Britten was asserting his own authorial voice over Ferrier’s actual voice, but another, more convincing argument is that Ferrier used her voice in such a manner to depict the youthful moment of the first glimpse of spring. While Britten’s score required Ferrier to sing particular vowels on particular notes, she deliberately and precisely gave those notes a striking ‘audible reality’.36 A reviewer at the time took issue with Ferrier’s performance of Britten’s Herrick setting, claiming that her voice ‘sounded too heavy for the delicate short lines’.37 Yet it can be seen that Ferrier carried out Britten’s intention to express the sadness of the violet’s demise, having only just appeared to ‘bring in the spring’.

‘OUT ON THE LAWN I LIE IN BED’: BRITTEN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH AUDEN Britten’s relationship with Auden and his poetry is complicated, and warrants examination before beginning an analysis of ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’. Britten and Wystan Hugh (W.H.) Auden (1907–1973) first met in 1935 while working at the GPO Film Unit.38 Evidently, Auden’s immediate impact on Britten was profound, as he gushed in his diary, ‘He is a remarkably fine brain’ and ‘I always feel very young & stupid when with these [Auden and William Coldstream’s] brains—I mostly sit silent when they hold forth about subjects in general. What brains!’.39 At the Film Unit they collaborated on Coal Face (1935) and (1936), and soon after on a number of Group Theatre productions such as The Ascent of F6 (1936) and On the Frontier (1938).40 During that time the two worked on their own projects together, such as Cabaret Songs (1937–39), (1936),

35 Both the poem and the setting have unexpected endings for a song about spring. An alternate ending to Herrick’s poem about the first glimpse of violets in spring might be more optimistic and describe the flower in full bloom, rather than describe its sad demise. Similarly, in the beginning Britten’s music for Ferrier suggests but does not show the full bloom of her voice, and the alternate ending might include, for example, of ‘rose’ on C5. That close-mid back rounded vowel on that note would reveal the fullness of Ferrier’s sound that was only hinted at in the beginning. 36 Carolyn Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, edited by Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 255. 37 Desmond Taylor-Shawe, quoted in Letters from a Life Volume 3: 257. 38 John Evans, ed., Journeying Boy: The Diaries of Young Benjamin Britten 1928–1938 (London: Faber, 2010) 276. 39 Britten, diary entries, 4 and 17 September 1935, in Evans, ed., Journeying Boy, 276 & 278. 40 In 1937 Britten and Auden also collaborated on a BBC radio show called ‘Up the Garden Path’, which was an ‘elaborate leg-pull’, for which they gathered a ‘large and impressive list of poets and composers and then proceed to demonstrate what has often been termed the drivel that has on occasions been produced by these masters. The programme is, in effect, a miscellany of the world’s worst words and music’. ‘Radio Topics, by a radio correspondent’, quoted in Donald Mitchell, Britten and Auden in the Thirties: The Year 1936: The TS Eliot Memorial Lectures Delivered at the University of Kent at in November 1979 (London: Faber, 1981) 126.

94 Underneath the Abject Willow (1936), and On This Island (1937).41 According to Britten’s diaries, working with Auden on The Ascent of F6 and Cabaret Songs was a very happy time. On 26 February 1937 he wrote,

After the show we all have a good party at the Theatre & then feeling very cheerful we all sing (cast & about 20 audience) my blues two or three times as well as going thro’ most of the music of the play! Then I play & play & play, while the whole cast dances & sings & fools, & gets generally wild.42

In 1937 Peter Pears entered Britten’s circle of friends, and in 1939, at the outset of the Second World War, the two followed Auden to America.43 While in America, Britten and Auden worked together on the operetta (1941), which precipitated the cooling and eventual dissolution of their friendship.44 Britten’s dissatisfaction with Paul Bunyan— both his work on and the reception of it—prompted his search for his own musical language. Britten was finally motivated to return to the UK after reading E.M. Forster’s Listener article on George Crabbe’s Peter Grimes—an event he interpreted as a summons to his native roots.45 Finally, in March 1942, he and Pears (with some difficulty) obtained passage on a ship to Liverpool. As Britten was preparing to leave America, Auden penned a much-quoted letter, admonishing Britten for his supposed pederastic inclinations, bourgeois conventionality, perceived hypochondria, and apparently needy and self-centered personality, and implying that he was juvenile. This was Auden’s final correspondence with Britten. 46 Their relationship was effectively severed. As Pears later recalled, ‘Ben was no longer prepared to be dominated—bullied—by Wystan’.47

Although Britten never resurrected his friendship with Auden, he continued to value Auden’s poetry, and his was the only poem by a living composer included in Spring Symphony. Britten purchased his copy of Look, Stranger! in 1936—the year after he met Auden. As well as ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’, the collection contains the poetry of their

41 Auden also introduced Britten to the work of nineteenth-century poet Arthur Rimbaud, whose work Britten set for the song cycle Les Illuminations (1939–1940). 42 Britten, diary entry, 26 February 1937, quoted in Donald Mitchell, Britten and Auden in the Thirties: The Year 1936 (Faber and Faber: London, 1981) 124. 43 Brian McMahon suggests that another reason for Britten’s move to America was that ‘his love life was in a mess and he needed to get away for a time’, and that ‘in the event of a Nazi victory, there would be little future in England for a homosexual, pacifist, and composer of contemporary music’. Brian McMahon, ‘Why Did Britten Return to Wartime England?’, Benjamin Britten: New Perspectives on His Life and Work, ed. Lucy Walker (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2009) 177–78. 44 Also during this time his relationship with Pears was consummated. 45 See Kildea, Britten: A Life, 184. 46 Auden wrote, ‘Your attraction to thin-as-board juveniles, i.e. to the sexless and innocent, is a symptom of this [bourgeois convention]. And I am certain that it is your denial and evasion of the attractions demands of this disorder that is responsible for your attacks of ill-health, ie sickness is your substitute for the Bohemian’. See W.H. Auden, letter to Britten, 31 January 1942, quoted in Kildea, Britten: A Life, 197. 47 Peter Pears to Humphrey Carpenter, 18 April 1980, in Carpenter, W.H. Auden: A Biography, 323.

95 very first musical collaborations: ‘Our hunting fathers’ (set 1936); ‘Let the florid music praise’ (set 1937); ‘Now the leaves are falling fast’ (set 1937); ‘As it is, plenty’ (set 1937); ‘To lie flat on the back with the knees flexed’ (set 1937); ‘Night covers up the rigid land (set 1937); ‘Underneath the abject willow’ (set 1936 and 1941); ‘Fish in the unruffled lakes’ (set 1938). Furthermore, Auden dedicated ‘Night covers up the rigid land’ and ‘Underneath the abject willow’ to Britten. The book itself—and that selection of poems—obviously held sentimental value for Britten. It was a collection he used many times during his early years as a composer of vocal music and setter of English poetry, and one to which he referred for inspiration. But it was not until the composition of Spring Symphony, after a gap of eight years, that he returned to it. The book—a physical souvenir of that past, idyllic, intellectually rich life that he shared with Auden in England—belongs to the halcyon days before the war.

‘OUT ON THE LAWN I LIE IN BED’: SIGNIFICANCE & ANALYSIS According to Tim Barringer, for Britten the pastoral ‘was no diversion, but a genre that raised urgent questions about his own status as an artist, his relationship to the nation, to the region, and to his own identity’.48 While the rest of Spring Symphony promoted ‘vernal optimism’ and generally adhered to a traditional idea of pastoral music, Britten’s Auden setting for Ferrier, at the centre of the work, raises questions about nation and identity at a time when Britain was rebuilding itself and its culture.49

If Herrick’s ‘Welcome, maids of honour’ is a typically ‘spring-like’ poem, Auden’s ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’, with its reference to violence (‘Where Poland draws its Eastern bow / What violence is done’) is not. That reference darkens and politicises an otherwise light- filled poem. Britten’s spring music is somewhat subversive compared to Schubert’s prototype. By using a low-voiced female singer in the context of a dark, more serious topic, he emphasises winter’s overhanging darkness where other composers emphasise the optimism, light and new life that comes with spring. Arguably, the seasons had a broader meaning for Britten: winter is not confined to December, January and February, but refers to the entire duration of World War Two. In that case, the spring of Britten’s Spring Symphony is the months and years directly following the war—in other words, the aftermath. Donald Mitchell explains that Britten’s Auden setting

48 Barringer, ‘I Am Native, Rooted Here’, 136. 49 Peter Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten (London: Dent, 1989) 425.

96 reminds us, retrospectively, in a work with its roots in Britten’s love of spring (the season he loved most, he told me once), of the threatening atmosphere … of the 1930s which exploded into the Second World War, part of the history of Britten’s own times, a history in which he himself was enveloped. It is worth a moment’s consideration to reflect on the oddity, though that’s not the right word, of a hymn to spring, which the symphony ostensibly is, invoking the threat of war as a central reference in the movement that constitutes the most important stretch of slow music in the main body of work.50

When he toured Bergen-Belsen with in July 1945, Britten experienced first-hand the terrible destruction caused by the war.51 This was ‘terrifying’ for Britten, someone who, as a pacifist, ‘disbelieve[d] profoundly in power and violence’.52 Britten expressed his devastation through music, such as in his Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945), and the bitter aftertaste was still present some four years later in Spring Symphony.53 Despite the sensory beauty of Auden’s poem, Britten’s musical setting—even of the lovely first stanza—is dissonant and astringent, accentuated by his unexpected use of a low-voiced female singer.

Edward Mendelson argues that Auden’s poem is all about reconciliation.54 For Britten, moreover, ‘Out on the lawn’ is a poem of personal remembrance and reflection, not necessarily an attempt at reconciliation with his former friend and colleague. Auden wrote ‘Out on the lawn’ during one of the happiest times in his life, which he later described:

One fine summer night in June 1933 I was sitting on a lawn after dinner with three colleagues, two women and one man. … We were talking about everyday matters when, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power which, though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine. For the first time in my life I knew exactly—because, thanks to the power, I was doing it—what it means to love one’s neighbour as oneself. I was also certain, though the conversation continued to be perfectly ordinary, that my three colleagues were having the same experience … My

50 Donald Mitchell, ‘Violent Climates’, in The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, ed. Mervyn Cooke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 197. 51 On 27 July 1945, Britten (replacing pianist Gerald Moore) and violinist Yehudi Menuhin gave two concerts at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower-Saxony, Germany. Menuhin later described their experience: ‘Men and women alike, our audience was dressed in army blankets fashioned by clever tailors among them into skirts and suits’. and ‘they seemed desperate and haggard, and many were still in hospital’. Yehudi Menuhin, quoted in Kildea, Britten: A Life, 254. 52 Benjamin Britten, quoted in Murray Schafer, British Composers in Interview (Faber and Faber: London, 1963) 117 and 122. 53 The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, op. 35, was the first piece of music Britten composed upon returning from Bergen-Belsen. He and Pears premiered the cycle at in London on 22 November 1945, Britten’s thirty-second birthday. 54 Mendelson, Early Auden, 167.

97 personal feelings towards them were unchanged—they were still colleagues, not intimate friends—but I felt their existence as themselves to be of infinite value and rejoiced in it’.55

At the time of writing the poem, World War Two had not yet occurred, although Auden did have some sense of foreboding for what was to come. He had, after all, spent time living in Berlin in 1928 and 1929, during which time Nazi brownshirts roamed the city and the Communists rallied against police brutality.56 Years later in 1965, Auden reflected on his time in Berlin, explaining that ‘one realised that the whole foundations of life were shaking’.57 According to Humphrey Carpenter, Auden privately anticipated another war after reading Mein Kampf. Auden recalled, ‘In Hitler’s determination to be the master of Europe and Russia … there was something profoundly self-destructive’. 58 Although inspired by a beautiful summer night, the poem coincided with Hitler’s ascendance to power and the establishment of the Third Reich.

For Britten, however, ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’ held a different significance. By the time he composed Spring Symphony, World War Two had been and gone, and had ruined many of those things that Britten enjoyed in the 1930s. While in America Britten was full of anxiety for the horrors that were occurring both at home in England and in Continental Europe, which he articulated in letters home.59 When he returned to England in 1942 he lamented, ‘this cannot be called life here. It is just an intermission’.60 Two years later he described being in London as ‘like living in an H.G. Wells fantasy’.61 London was an altogether different city to the one he left in 1939. Food was severely rationed, close to a million houses and buildings had been destroyed or damaged, and, according to novelist Mollie Panter-Downes, ‘the streets were like those of Dickens’ murky London by day and like Dante’s Inferno by night’.62 His friendship with Auden was ruined and Britain as he knew it was largely lost. Heather Wiebe suggests that although in Spring Symphony Britten ‘evokes a pastoral, domestic Englishness’, his music questions what it is that ‘underwrites

55 W.H. Auden, quoted in Edward Mendelson, Early Auden, 160. 56 Carpenter, W.H. Auden: A Biography, 102. 57 WH Auden, BBC television interview, 28 November 1965, quoted in Carpenter, W.H. Auden: A Biography, 102. 58 W.H. Auden, New York Review of Books, 31 August 1972, 6, quoted in Carpenter, W.H. Auden: A Biography, 164. 59 See, for example, Britten’s letter to Ralph Hawkes, 7 October 1940, in Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed, eds., Letters From A Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, 1939–1945, volume 2 (London: Faber & Faber, 1998): 868. 60 Benjamin Britten, letter to Beata Mayer, April 1942, quoted in Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 201. 61 Benjamin Britten, letter to Elizabeth Mayer, 19 July 1944, in Letters From A Life, volume 2:1211. 62 Mollie Panter-Downes, quoted in David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–51 (New York: N.Y. Walker, 2008) 401.

98 this construction of Englishness’, which, on analysis, is darker and more disturbing than the England Auden imagined many years earlier.63

Britten selected only four stanzas from Auden’s sixteen-stanza poem. His selection forms a political statement against bourgeois entitlement, and against the enablers of war and violence. The first stanza seems innocuous enough, describing a calming windless night enjoyed after ‘the day’s activity’. The second stanza, beginning ‘Now North and South and East and West’ is reminiscent of a line in Auden’s poem ‘Funeral Blues’ (1938), which Britten set in Cabaret Songs. Is it sheer coincidence or a deliberate reference? Regardless, this seemingly tender stanza describes a moon that watches over those whom the narrator loves, and a motley crew of Britons. The line ‘those I love lie down to rest’ perhaps has a double meaning: in the context of Britten’s setting, are they the hungry, the displaced, the victims of the war? In the third stanza the now-self-indulgent narrator is not disturbed by any such ‘hunger’, and he ignorantly, wilfully, or stubbornly remains in the ‘security’ of his ‘garden’. He simply looks up and ‘endures’ the ‘tyrannies of love’, which seems like a contradiction in terms. Is Britten’s love—for home, for men, for the pastoral—an unreciprocated or oppressive force? Finally, he turns a blind eye to the violence of the war, and refuses to ask at what cost comes his ‘freedom in the English house’ and his ‘picnics in the sun’. Britten’s careful selection of the stanzas, combined with his music, adds a commentary to Auden’s words. On Auden’s summer night in the early 1930s, war was a distant prospect, looming in the far off horizon, threatening to shatter ‘the windless nights of June’. On Britten’s summer night in 1949, however, no summery bliss could disguise the violence of and decay resulting from World War Two. His—and his fellow countryman’s— ‘freedom to picnic in the sun’ had come at an awful cost.

FERRIER’S RECORDING AND THE SCORE Ferrier’s recording of ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’ demonstrates the comparatively different way in which Britten used her voice in ‘Welcome, Maids of Honour’. It is a dark and brooding contrast to the earlier aria, both in terms of the vocal line and the orchestration, which in this movement consists only of woodwind, brass and percussion. The modal alto flute line, wordless choral interjections, and violent thumps from the brass create an ominous atmosphere, like a cloud threatening to break into rain. The movement begins with a wordless choral ritornello that employs all twelve pitches, followed by a (tonally ambiguous) tonic chord over a third-less second inversion dominant. A modal duet

63 Heather Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 147.

99 between alto flute and B♭ clarinet introduces the alto solo, marked pianissimo sostenuto

(Example 17). The alto solo begins on G4, which sits right in the middle of Ferrier’s voice. Each phrase—which corresponds to a single stanza from the poem—starts on an offbeat and is carried over a bar line, shrouding any strong sense of pulse. The resultant feeling is one of unending languor. Ferrier’s voice sounds sensuous and, sitting on that G4 while the flute and clarinet play their own modal variations of that line, takes on an ethereal, otherworldly quality. Her voice reveals its lusciousness on the open of ‘out’ and <ɔ> of ‘lawn’, but, at a pianissimo dynamic, also sounds hesitant.64

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Example 17: Britten, ‘Out on the lawn’, Spring Symphony, bars 5–8.

Although Auden’s words conjure a beautiful image of a heady summer night, Britten’s lovely but already unsettling music—the unusual combination of modes in the flute and clarinet duet, and the languorous alto solo—signals the sensory clash ahead. Further, the opening melody of the alto line seems as simple and as innocuous as possible. Slowly, the solo alto line rises as Britten gradually augments each phrase with a semitone. At fig. 9 Ferrier sings ‘To gravity attentive, she / Can notice nothing here; / Though we whom

64 Collins Dictionary, s.vv. ‘out’ and ‘lawn’.

100 hunger cannot move, / From gardens where we feel secure’ in duet with fluttering flute demisemiquaver solo, the effect of which is harmonically destabilising. Again, Britten’s ‘insecure’ music is at odds with Auden’s reference to security. The following line—‘and with a sigh, endure / The tyrannies of love’—descends to G♯3 below the stave, which is the lowest note for the soloist in this movement. The darkness of Ferrier’s voice at that particular moment carries great foreboding for what is about to come.

Approaching the climax, Ferrier suddenly introduces a weightier quality to her voice. The alto line starts pianissimo in an ascending B♭ major scale, in contrary motion to the and basses of the choir. Sudden sfzorzando brass chords shatter the quiet: C trumpets are in B♭ minor, and trombones in A minor. As the alto line rises to sing ‘Where Poland draws her Eastern bow’, at the end of the phrase the trumpets play a C minor chord and the trombones a D minor chord. At the climax, as the alto soloist sings ‘What violence is done’ (Example 18), trumpets are heard again on a sforzando C♯ minor chord, and the trombones respond in B♭ minor. A final triple forte C♯ minor chord sounds before a decrescendo and reintroduction of the chorus.

For the first time in the movement, Britten, Auden and Ferrier are of one mind: Britten’s violent music, Ferrier’s high and passionate outburst, and Auden’s suddenly political text tell a bleak and unhappy story. As Donald Mitchell explains, this ‘sudden vision of conflict … shatters the nocturnal scene’ described at the beginning of the poem.65 Because of the volume and resonance of Ferrier’s voice in this particular section, the sound becomes quite distorted, but it is still possible to hear the focus and intensity of Ferrier’s voice on the E♮5 of ‘done’ (<ʌ> in phonetics), which is at the peak of the climax.66 The note is marked with a crescendo, and it is heard above the brass, which at that moment are fortissimo. Despite the distortion, Ferrier’s voice opens up to its full bloom, demonstrating the exceptional power of her contralto instrument in its upper register.

The opening ritornello is reintroduced, decrescendoing from forte to triple piano. The alto solo is a variation of the opening melody, which again sits around G4, to the words: ‘Nor ask what doubtful act allows / Our freedom / in this English house, / Our picnics in the sun’. In the recording, Ferrier sings ‘dreadful’ rather than ‘doubtful’, which seems an apt modification—accidental or otherwise—given the context of the setting. The dynamic of Ferrier’s voice quietens to match that of her initial entry, and again her warm and luscious

65 Donald Mitchell, ‘Violent Climates’, 196. 66 Collins Dictionary, s.v. ‘done’.

101 timbre can be heard. Calm is not quite reinstated—there is no real resolution in the vocal line, and the choir concludes the movement with a recapitulation of the ritornello, this time triple piano, and with closed lips to make a quiet and unsettling hum. The effect is reminiscent of the weather clearing after a storm, and the sun peeping again through the dark clouds.

This image is under copyright.

Example 18: Britten, ‘What violence is done’, ‘Out on the lawn’, Spring Symphony, bars 44– 50.

102 RECEPTION While reviews of Spring Symphony were generally positive, critics regarded Ferrier (along with other soloists) simply as a performer at the premiere. In a review by Charles Stuart for , Ferrier’s name is mentioned alongside the other soloists rather than in the context of her solos.67 Stuart does, however, remark on the poignancy of Britten’s Auden setting:

At first blush it would appear that this section, and, indeed, the Symphony as a whole—is dominated by contralto with chorus in W.H. Auden’s ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed’. Behind the voice woodwind instruments play quiet obbligato phrases. Starlit tranquillity is suddenly torn by clamour and pain. … Forty-five minutes of undiluted Spring is, in the ordinary way, thirty minutes too many, but Mr. Britten has been careful to introduce and space out human overtones and undertones. The Auden episode, with its echo of world conflict, is from this point of view vital.68

Daniel L. Schorr, reporting from Holland for the New York Times, reviewed the premiere performance, and later reviewed the festival as a whole, for which he singled out Spring Symphony as a highlight. On each occasion he was effusive about Ferrier’s performance. Directly after the premiere he wrote that ‘it is difficult to comment on individual performances, although Miss Ferrier attracted particular attention by the richness and warmth of her singing. More in point is it to say that the composer’s intention was most successfully carried off by harmonious cooperation of all the participants’.69 And, at the conclusion of the festival, he reiterated, ‘while the soloists were all generally excellent, there should be a special word for Miss Ferrier, whose warm, clear contralto and understanding of the score won her an ovation’.70

When, in 1994, the recording of a 1949 rehearsal was unearthed, a review in Gramophone declared that Ferrier ‘[reigned] supreme’.71 Ferrier performed Spring Symphony again in May 1952, joined by a new line-up of soloists, including Elsie Morrison (soprano) and (tenor). The Times critic described Ferrier’s performance as ‘glowing with warmth’, and the Stage critic similarly described it as ‘warm as spring sunshine’.72

67 Charles Stuart, ‘The Spring Symphony’, Observer, 17 July 1949, 6. 68 Stuart, ‘The Spring Symphony’, 6. 69 Daniel L. Schorr, ‘3,000 Dutch Cheer New Britten Work’, New York Times, 15 July 1949, 17. 70 Daniel L. Schorr, ‘Importations Favoured at Holland Festival’, New York Times, 7 August 1949, 5. 71 RC, ‘Britten: Spring Symphony’, Gramophone (September 1994) 134. 72 ‘BBC Concert: English Symphonies’, Times, 29 May 1952, KFA; and untitled review, Stage, 5 June 1952, KFA.

103 CONCLUSION Spring Symphony contrasts with Britten’s other compositions for Ferrier: she was not required to play a part or take on a persona role such as in The Rape of Lucretia and Canticle II. Rather; she had to do little more than sing as herself, or, more accurately, set aside a dramatic persona in order to convey the purity of Britten’s music. Ferrier was at home on the concert platform—indeed, oratorio engagements filled her schedule. Further, as a recitalist, Ferrier was skilled at giving clear delivery of poetic texts. For these two reasons, Spring Symphony (despite its musical difficulties and technical challenges) was familiar territory for Ferrier. Without the constraints of character, Britten had more freedom to play with and highlight the unique qualities of Ferrier’s voice, and her naturally expressive stage presence. Ferrier, too, was freed from the encumbrances of a dramatic role, and could stand and deliver that music tailored to her singular instrument. If at certain points Britten deployed Ferrier’s voice in a way that was neither pretty nor pleasant, it was to serve the unusual texts, and to demonstrate again the unnecessary horror of violence.73 Furthermore, Britten composed the most important and poignant solo for Ferrier, choosing her over the soprano and tenor for that meaningful Auden setting, and to depict the shocking ruination of his beloved England and English life following the war.

73 Ferrier acknowledged the difficulty of Britten’s music for her in a note to Britten not long before the Spring Symphony premiere. She wrote, ‘looking forward enormously to Holland! Getting worried though about seeing my notes & getting used to the augmented 19ths I know await me!! Hope I won’t let you down, mi darlin’! Will try awful hard not to!’. Kathleen Ferrier, postcard to Benjamin Britten, 5 May 1949, Britten-Pears Archive.

104 Chapter 5

Isaac’s ‘Boyish Nonchalance’ in Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac

Britten composed five canticles, each at a different point in his career, and for varying occasions and instrumentations (Table 5.1). The second canticle, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac (1952), was Britten’s third and last composition for Kathleen Ferrier. Using only tenor, alto and piano, Britten told the terrifying Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac, adapted from the fifteenth-century Chester Miracle Play.1 Drawing on the medieval text, and utilising a medieval musical language, Britten ‘drew on utopian modes of medievalism in wartime Britain, wherein music bridged past and present, heavenly and earthly, and high and low culture’.2 In that last composition for Ferrier, Britten again challenged her vocal and dramatic capabilities, this time—for the first time—requiring her to embody an adolescent boy. She not only had to adapt her voice to sound boyish, but she also had to appropriately modify her physicality. By this stage, Britten was familiar with the nuances and limitations of Ferrier’s voice, and Ferrier was at the very height of her career. Further, Ferrier was afflicted by the ill-effects of the breast cancer that eventually caused her death the following year, and Britten’s music took into account her somewhat fragile physical state.3 In the absence of a recording by Ferrier herself, recordings consulted for discussion of Canticle II include those by Norma Procter and John Hahessy.4

1 English Miracle Plays: Moralities and Interludes, 8th ed., ed. Alfred W. Pollard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927). 2 Heather Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 12. 3 For information on breast cancer treatments in 1950s Britain, see Patrick Borgen, ‘Breast Cancer in the 20th Century: Quest for Ideal Therapy’, Ochsner Journal 2, no. 1 (January 2000): 5–9. For information on the effect of breast cancer and treatments on the singing voice, see M.M. Baroody, K. Barnes-Burroughs, M.C. Rodriguez, D.M. Sataloff, and R.T. Sataloff, ‘Self-Reported Changes in the Professional Singing Voice After Surgical Intervention Treatment for Breast Cancer: A Survey Pilot Study for Female Professional Singers’, Journal of Voice 27, no. 2 (March 2013): 225–29. 4 Paul Campion describes the several attempts to record Canticle II, and writes that although a recording had been made for a BBC radio broadcast in February 1952, ‘on investigation it was found that it had gone, presumably destroyed in the normal course of events, after being broadcast once or twice again’. See Paul Campion, Ferrier: A Career Recorded (London: Thames, 2005) 188. John Hahessy (born 1946) is an Irish tenor, who now goes by the name of John Elwes. He started his career as a young at , where, aged thirteen, he met Britten (1959). He and Britten went on to record Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, selections from (1933–35), The Birds (1929), and Corpus Christi Carol from (1934, arranged for piano, 1961). Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Elwes [Hahessy], John ’, by

105 Britten’s canticle is its own unusual musical genre, sitting somewhere between a hymn and a cantata. All five canticles are vocal compositions, each with texts on a sacred or religious subject, and each composed not for a sacred setting (such a church service) but for a concert or recital setting. Peter Pears is the common link between each: his is the only voice or instrument that Britten used in all five works.

Title Year Text Author Occasion Instrumentation Canticle I My Beloved 1947 ‘A divine Francis In memory of tenor and piano is Mine and I rapture’ Quarles Dick Sheppard, am His, Op. (1592–1644) former vicar of 40 St Martin-in- the-Fields Canticle II Abraham and 1952 ‘Abraham and Chester English Opera tenor, alto and Isaac, Op. 51 Isaac’ Miracle Play Group piano (15th– Fundraising century) Tour Canticle Still Falls the 1954 ‘Still falls the Edith Sitwell In memory of tenor, horn and III Rain, Op. 55 rain’ (1187–1964) Australia piano pianist Noel Mewton-Wood Canticle IV Journey of the 1971 ‘Journey of T.S. Eliot Dedication: tenor, Magi, Op. the Magi’ (1888–1965) James, Peter countertenor and 86 and John baritone Canticle V Death of 1974 ‘Death of T.S. Eliot In memory of tenor and harp Saint Saint William Narcissus, Narcissus’ Plomer Op. 89 Table 5.1: Title, date, poem, poet, dedicatee/s, and number of soloists.

Britten’s main source of inspiration for his canticles was Purcell’s collection of Divine Hymns.5 In 1963 Britten explained, ‘The First Canticle was a new invention in a sense although it was certainly modelled on the Purcell Divine Hymns, but few people knew their Purcell well enough to realise that’.6 He further confessed, ‘Purcell is a great master at handling the English language in song, and I learned much from him. I recall a critic asking me with whom I had learned to set English poetry to music. I told him Purcell; he was amazed’.7 Purcell’s music, with its ‘sense of real news, immediacy, and intimacy’, provided a

Nicholas Anderson, accessed 12 September 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au; and Michael Dervan, ‘How Elwes Met Britten: “I Was a Bit of a Thug, but I Could Sing”’, Irish Times, 28 November 2013, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/how-elwes-met-britten-i-was-a-bit-of-a-thug-but-i- could-sing-1.1609394. 5 While for Britten the ‘folk revival’ was ‘potentially limiting’, the ‘discordant harmonies’ of Purcell represented to him what it was to be English. See Alexandra Harris, Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2010) 143. 6 Benjamin Britten, quoted in British Composers in Interview, ed. Murray Schafer (London: Faber & Faber, 1963) 121. 7 Britten, British Composers in Interview, 120.

106 setting ‘where the hidden experience—including that of war-related guilt and trauma— could be safely explored’.8

Britten—along with other composers such as Michael Tippett and Elizabeth Lutyens— was well ‘engaged’ with Purcell’s music from the mid-1940s.9 In 1945, for the 250th anniversary of Purcell’s death, Britten programmed two commemorative concerts at Wigmore Hall. In the programme notes he wrote, ‘ was the last important international figure of English music. … He is the antithesis of the music which has been popular for so long in this country’.10 Heather Wiebe argues that ‘there were many practical reasons for this resurgence of interest, not least the fact that this music, unlike that of the Tudors, was largely untouched by the previous generation of composers’.11 It is certainly true that Britten rejected the music of his immediate predecessors, such as Elgar and Parry, in 1941 declaring ‘There have been so few outstanding composers in England since the turn of the century’.12 Wiebe also quotes Philip Brett, who controversially thought that Britten’s engagement with Purcell was ‘more an act of appropriation or competition than homage, another Oedipal episode in the composer’s complicated trajectory’.13 Regardless of whether this was the case for Britten’s Purcell arrangements, his canticles undoubtedly place him alongside Purcell in the canon of English vocal music. And however complicated Brett perceived Britten’s relationship to Purcell to be, Purcell’s influence on Canticle II is clearly apparent.14

There are three connecting threads evident in the first three canticles: war, pacifism, and the love of men. Canticle I: My Beloved is Mine explores homosexual love, and also commemorates the tenth anniversary of pacifist Dick Sheppard’s death. 15 Canticle II

8 Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts, 13. 9 Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts, 72; and Justin Vickers, ‘‘The Ineffable Moments will be Harder Won’: The Genesis, Compositional Process, and Early Performance History of Michael Tippett’s The Heart’s Assurance’, DMA thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 2011, 19. 10 Benjamin Britten, quoted in Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 2013; Penguin 2014) 260–61. 11 Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts, 73. 12 Benjamin Britten, ‘England and the Folk-Art Problem’, Modern Music 18, no. 2 (January–February 1941): 71. 13 Philip Brett, quoted in Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts, 73. 14 There is a clear likeness between the ‘farewell’ sections of both ‘Saul and the Witch at Endor’ and Canticle II. Heather Wiebe quotes Desmond Shawe-Taylor who explains that ‘the layout of Canticle II is influenced, I imagine, by Purcell’s vividly dramatic scena describing the visit of Saul to the Witch of Endor’. Desmond Shawe-Taylor, ‘Britten’s Canticles’, New Statesman and Nation, 22 January 1955, 102, quoted in Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts, 101. 15 Anglican priest High Richard Lawrie ‘Dick’ Sheppard (1880–1937) founded the Peace Pledge Union in 1934. ‘Dick Shepherd’, Peace Pledge Union, accessed 12 September 2017, http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/people/pst_dick.html. Britten joined the Peace Pledge Union in 1935, and distributed PPU leaflets to homes in Lowestoft. Brian McMahon, ‘Why did Britten Return to Wartime

107 reimagines the violent Old Testament story to become an ‘interior drama of powerful intimacy; of, paradoxically, peace’.16 Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain was written in memory of Australian-born pianist Noel Mewton-Wood, who committed suicide following the death of his partner William Fedrick, and features Edith Sitwell’s 1940 poem about London’s devastating air raids.17 Making a detour, Canticle IV: Journey of the Magi is dedicated to its three male singers—Peter Pears, James Bowman, and John Shirley-Quirk—and meditates on the perilous journey undertaken by the three kings as they set out for the baby Jesus. The poem—and Britten’s music—speaks of alienation from the world. Returning to memorial, Canticle V: The Death of Saint Narcissus is dedicated to Britten’s four-time librettist William Plomer and, according to playwright Neil Bartlett and director Paul Constable, ‘looks back—on male eroticism, on male violence, as always dancing closely together—and forwards—to death’.18 It seems very likely that Ferrier’s terminal illness was on Britten’s mind at the time of writing Canticle II, as he too grappled with the effects of her cancer, and that it was therefore intended as a memorial to her. Although Ferrier was alive when he composed it, she had been gravely unwell, and this piece of music was a final, and precious, gift for the ailing singer.

A decade earlier, in his article ‘England and the Folk-Art Problem’, Britten had lamented the state of English music, decrying that ‘folksong is no longer part of the social life of the people’, and recalled ‘Scottish fisher-girls who visited my home town of Lowestoft to gut the herrings every fall, singing their lovely, lilting Highland tunes’.19 He urged composers to shrug off the influence of their recent English forebears, and look to a distant past to find a national sound and ‘carry on the human heritage’ of music.20 Britten had by now established himself as the eminent British composer, and had developed his own musical language, shunning the influence of recent English composers in favour of Purcell. His new musical language, and his expression of Englishness through his music—particularly in Canticle II—was far from the pastoral soundscapes of his recent ‘fathers and uncles’.21

England?’, Benjamin Britten: New Perspectives on His Life and Work, ed. Lucy Walker (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2009) 174. 16 Neil Bartlett and Paule Constable, ‘Staging Britten’s Canticles: “Everything about them is potent”’, Guardian, 20 November 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/20/neil-bartlett-staging- brittens-canticles. 17 Australian Dictionary of Biography, s.v. ‘Mewton-Wood, Noel Charles Victor (1922–1953)’, by C.W.F. McKenna, accessed 15 September 2018, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mewton-wood-noel-charles-victor- 11116. 18 Bartlett and Constable, ‘Staging Britten’s Canticles’. 19 Benjamin Britten, ‘England and the Folk-Art Problem’, Modern Music XVIII, no. 2 (January–February 1941): 72. 20 Britten, ‘England and the Folk-Art Problem’, 75. 21 Britten, ‘England and the Folk-Art Problem’, 75.

108 The premiere of Canticle II came at a time of great flux in British art and music. It was now seven years since the end of World War Two, and England was rebuilding itself, literally and figuratively.22 Justin Vickers explains how, at that time, composers of Britten’s generation sought to find and express ‘reconciliation and catharsis’ in their music.23 The (1951) promoted and reaffirmed the nation’s resolve through art, and according to Nathaniel G. Lew, ‘provided an opportunity and in fact an imperative to survey national achievement in music’.24 Heather Wiebe describes it as a ‘statement of post-war recovery’.25 Britten’s 1951 Aldeburgh Festival was held concurrently with the Festival of Britain. At the time of the canticle’s premiere, daily papers were giving constant updates on the rapidly deteriorating condition of the terminally ill King George VI. His death on 6 February 1952 was followed by shock and mourning. In a letter to Britten, Ferrier wrote, ‘my heart bleeds for our royal family, doesn’t yours? … poor sweet darlings’.26 Elizabeth, who had been on tour in Kenya on behalf of her father, returned to England as soon as she received news of his death, and was crowned as Queen the following year, on 2 June 1953. For that occasion artists were invited to create something in celebration of the new Elizabethan era. Canticle II came, therefore, at a time when England was slowly rebuilding itself after the war, and directly before the mourning of the king and the nationalistic excitement of a coronation.27

FERRIER’S ILLNESS Ferrier had been diagnosed with breast cancer in March 1951, less than one year before the premiere of Canticle II.28 One of Ferrier’s earliest written mentions of her illness is in a letter to Benita Cress on 28 March 1951:

22 According to Heather Wiebe, ‘recovery from the long and devastating involvement in the Second World War was painfully slow. Rationing of food continued. Britain struggled under a crippling foreign debt, necessitated by its crippling investment in the war. That the bulk of this debt was to the United States was an additional source of bitterness, as the British watched the Americans eclipse their own status as a world power in the immediate post war-period’. Heather Wiebe, ‘‘Now and England’: Britten’s Gloriana and the ‘New Elizabethans’’, Cambridge Opera Journal 17, no. 2 (2015): 145. 23 Vickers, ‘The Ineffable Moments’, 49. 24 Nathaniel G. Lew, Tonic to the Nation: Making English Music in the Festival of Britain (London: Routledge, 2016) 6. 25 Wiebe, ‘Now and England’, 146. 26 Letter to Britten, 12 February 1952, Ferrier, Letters and Diaries, 216. In April 1952 Ferrier was asked to sing at a private party for the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. She wrote, ‘They are, evidently, and obviously, very sad and heartbroken by the death of the King, and it was suggested by one of their ladies that they had a little “do”, and I am told they have cheered up considerably at the idea’. Letter to John Newmark, 4 April 1952, Ferrier, Letters and Diaries, 218. 27 As in The Rape of Lucretia and Spring Symphony, the theme of innocence lost still pervades Britten’s music. However, rather than meditating on destruction, this time the ending—the sparing of Isaac’s life—is ultimately uplifting. 28 Christopher Fifield, Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier rev. ed., ed. Christopher Fifield (Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2003) 170.

109 I have to go into hospital any day now for a rather formidable ‘op’ for a ‘bump on mi busto’. But having Bernie there has lightened the load enormously and I am in the finest radiologists’ and surgeons’ hands in the country. I have had to cancel a month’s tour in Scandinavia and everything in the middle of May—but I am glad of a rest—and feel better now that everything is done. I should have gone earlier, but haven’t been home for months. The X-ray yesterday was better than they thought.29

Although Ferrier sounds optimistic in her letter, she does not reveal just how serious the breast cancer diagnosis was at the time. She did, however, go into some specifics in a letter to pianist John Newmark, to whom she wrote, ‘I had to go into hospital for a rather serious operation… [and] had one breast removed just 3 weeks ago today. Now I have to have six weeks of ray treatment, which is sick-making, lazy-making, and rather depressing’.30 Britten had for some time been acutely aware of Ferrier’s ill health, and he and Pears both visited Ferrier in hospital for her birthday following her initial operation. Ferrier recorded in to Newmark, ‘My birthday was riotous with … champagne … and visits from Ben and Peter, Win, Paddy, and many musical buddies, and all the sweet nurses trying to find excuses to come and peep at Ben Britten!!’.31 According to Christopher Fifield, Ferrier had to cancel all engagements until 19 June, when she performed Bach’s with the London Bach Choir at the Royal Albert Hall. 32 She was able to honour her commitments for the remainder of the year, whilst now making frequent hospital visits.33 A month after the premiere of Canticle II, Ferrier wrote again to Benita Cress, ‘my doctor still comes regularly, but really only so that I will accompany him on his Strad, more than to examine me! I go to the hospital at intervals so that they can keep an eye on me, and apart from rheumatiz in my back, feel okey-doke’.34 For all Ferrier’s optimism, her illness remained a constant concern.

CONCEPTION OF THE ROLE OF ISAAC In 1951, in a letter to Ralph Hawkes Britten first mentions the possibility of composing another piece of music for Ferrier, but does not go into particulars, only speculating that he

29 Letter to Benita Cress, 28 March 1951, Ferrier, Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, 184. Benita Cress was one of Ferrier’s American friends. Bernadine ‘Bernie’ Hammond was Ferrier’s secretary and nurse from 1951 up until Ferrier’s death. 30 Kathleen Ferrier, letter to John Newmark, 1 May 1951, Letters and Diaries, 188. 31 Ferrier to Newmark, Letters and Diaries, 188. 32 Fifield, Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, 171. 33 Fifield, Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, 171. 34 Letter to Cress, 19 February to 2 March 1952, Ferrier, Letters and Diaries, 217.

110 will write another piece for her ‘some day’.35 It is not until 8 January 1952—two weeks before the 21 January premiere of Canticle II—that he mentions it, writing to Basil Coleman, ‘I have owed you a letter for so long—but what with the piece of music for Kath & Peter to write … there simply hasn’t been a moment’.36 According to Ferrier, ‘the ink was still wet for the 1st performance’, which confirms the very quick turnaround for the composition.37 Britten, Ferrier and Pears premiered the work on 21 January 1952, in Nottingham, as part of a fundraising concert for the English Opera Group.38

Composed between the operas (1951) and Gloriana (1953), Canticle II demonstrates Britten’s already well-developed skill of composing for dramatic stage music. Britten adapted text from the Chester Miracle Play, more than halving the play’s 283 lines to 117 lines, giving God seven, the expositor eight, Isaac forty-six, and Abraham fifty.39 According to medievalist and Old English literature scholar Allen Frantzen, Britten ‘omitted most (if not all) of the text that draws attention to Isaac’s pathos’, therefore asking his audience to feel more for the father who must sacrifice his own son than for the son who is slain at the hand of his father.40 Frantzen implies that Britten’s text, by apparently reducing the ‘pathos of the boy’s plight’, was emotionally manipulative.41 However, Britten was interested in expressing the complexities of that anguished biblical situation, demonstrating the sheer ugliness of the task that God set for Abraham.42 Graham Elliot explains that ‘the parable of Canticle II teaches that when Man put his trust totally in God, God’s mercy is total’.43 Britten’s musical rendering and adaptation of the Chester Miracle Play seems to question whether the God who commanded and then spared Isaac’s sacrifice was a benevolent or malevolent one, rather than judge the actions of God’s two faithful human servants.

35 Benjamin Britten, letter to Ralph Hawkes, 24 March 1949, Letters From a Life vol. 3, ed. Philip Reed, Mervyn Cooke, and Donald Mitchell (Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2004) 499. Ralph Hawkes (1898–1950) was Britten’s music publisher, and one half of the publishing company Boosey & Hawkes. 36 Benjamin Britten, Letters From a Life vol. 4, ed. Philip Reed, Mervyn Cooke, and Donald Mitchell (Boydell Press: Woodbridge, 2008) 21. 37 Ferrier, Letters and Diaries, 213. 38 Ferrier’s other music for the tour included Gluck’s Che faró senza Euridice, two Morley duets, a Purcell duet, three of Britten’s folksong arrangements, and an arrangement of ‘Oliver Cromwell’ for duet. The encore was the duet ‘The Deaf Woman’s Courtship’, again arranged by Britten. See ‘English Opera Group presents programme’, Britten Pears Foundation, accessed 5 April 2018, http://www.bpfcatalogue.org/view/365658; and Benjamin Britten, ‘Three Premieres’, in Kathleen Ferrier: A Memoir, ed. Neville Cardus (Penguin: Hamish Hamilton, 1954) 58. 39 Allen J. Frantzen, ‘Tears for Abraham: The Chester Play of Abraham and Isaac and Antisacrifice in Works by Wilfred Owen, Benjamin Britten, and Derek Jarman’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 455. 40 Frantzen, ‘Tears for Abraham’, 457. 41 Frantzen, ‘Tears for Abraham’, 456. 42 Britten, ‘Three Premieres’, 278. 43 Graham Elliott, Benjamin Britten: The Spiritual Dimension (London: Oxford University Press, 2006) 100.

111 Stylistically, Canticle II is different to both The Rape of Lucretia and Spring Symphony: it is smaller in scale, requiring only three musicians (two singers and one pianist), but nonetheless covers a myriad of emotions: excitement, fear, anger, love, resignation, grief, and, finally, relief. Paul Kildea interprets the emotional journey as a variation of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, and adds that ‘Britten manages redemption as well and gives each stage a different musical and metaphysical character’.44 While the tenor line is at times virtuosic, the range of the alto line is quite contained, mostly sitting in the middle of the stave, never above it, with the occasional note below. That was a clear point of difference from Britten’s previous music for Ferrier: in The Rape of Lucretia her vocal line spanned a range of over two octaves, in Spring Symphony the range was just shy of two octaves, and in Canticle II the range spanned only a twelfth from A♭3 to E♭5. Ferrier reportedly gave breathtaking performances of the role of Isaac, and of her last public performance of the work Britten later recalled,

Many people have said that they will never forget the occasion: the beautiful church, her beauty and incredible courage, and the wonderful characterisation of her performance, including every changing emotion of the boy Isaac—the boyish nonchalance of the walk up to the fatal hill, his bewilderment, his sudden terror, his touching resignation to his fate, — the simplicity of the Envoi, but, above all, combining with the other voice, the remote and ethereal sounds as ‘God speaketh’.45

RECORDINGS Although Britten, Pears and Ferrier made several attempts to record Canticle II, no recording has survived or surfaced.46 There are, however, two recordings with Britten at the piano and Pears as Abraham: the first, made in 1957, with Norma Procter as Isaac, and the second, made in 1961, with treble John Hahessy as Isaac.47 Apparently, Britten chose the recording with Hahessy as his preferred, and the recording with Procter was not commercially released until 1999.

44 Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, 358. 45 Benjamin Britten, ‘Three Premieres’, in Kathleen Ferrier: A Memoir, ed. Neville Cardus (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1954) 59–60. 46 Fifield, Letters and Diaries, 211; and Britten, ‘Three Premieres’, 60–61. 47 On YouTube there is a third recording (1977) with Peter Pears, possibly a bootleg recording of a live performance. Janet Baker sings Isaac, and Graham Johnson is at the piano. It is a very moving recording, not least because Pears’s voice sounds considerably older and frailer, lending vulnerability to Abraham’s characterization. Janet Baker is a lovely Isaac. See: Benjamin Britten, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, with Janet Baker, Peter Pears and Graham Johnson. Aldeburgh Festival, 1977, accessed 13 September 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkIcsT_fjAI&feature=youtu.be; Britten, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, Britten Rarities, with Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Norma Procter, recorded 1967, Eloquence ELQ4802296, 2012, 1 compact disc; and Britten, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, The Canticles, with Benjamin Britten, John Hahessy and Peter Pears, recorded 1961, London Records 425 716-2, 1990, 1 compact disc.

112 Some scholars and commentators suggest that the preferable performance involves tenor and countertenor, rather than tenor and contralto. Frantzen finds that the combination of tenor and countertenor is most suitable, arguing that it ‘does not necessarily queer the boy’s role by locating him in the operatic category of a trouser role … although such casting maximises ambiguity about the boy’s age’. 48 Humphrey Carpenter disagrees, instead claiming that ‘Canticle II is most effective when, as in Britten and Pears’s 1961 Decca recording, the part of Isaac is taken by a boy with a voice just about to break’.49 In 1962, Musical Times reviewer Edward Greenfield admitted that ‘Those who heard Ferrier tell me she was a more moving Isaac’, but reacted similarly to Carpenter, writing, ‘I find Hahessy’s directness exactly right’. 50 Graham Elliott attempts to correct Britten’s scoring for contralto, suggesting that Isaac is ‘more appropriately’ cast when sung by a male.51 Charles Parsons, reviewing a 1997 recording with Ian Bostridge (tenor) and Michael Chance (countertenor), felt that use of countertenor was inappropriate, and mistakenly thought that it was originally composed for treble:

I am troubled by the performances of several works here, in particular in Canticle II by the replacement of a boy treble by a countertenor. The brittle artificiality is inappropriate and certainly not intended by Britten. Isaac is meant to be a real boy. While Bostridge and Chance sing exquisitely, this is too gentle a reading, with many a portamento and very little drama.52

Considering that few women now record Canticle II (which has become the domain of male singers), there are few reviews of performances with women. However, writing for Gramophone in 2001, Arnold Whittall gave the following appraisal of Procter’s recording:

It’s difficult to put any price on a performance like that of Canticle II. This 1957 recording, with Norma Procter alongside Peter Pears and Britten, was not released at the time, for reasons explained in the booklet. Yet it seems to me the best there has ever been—an inspired account of one of Britten’s most inspired compositions.53

Procter herself was baffled as to why Britten chose Hahessy’s recording over her own:

While we were waiting, unbeknown to me, Ben became interested in a young Irish chorister—John Hahessy—[…] he then broke the news to me that they had already

48 Frantzen, ‘Tears for Abraham’, 458. 49 Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (Faber and Faber: London, 1992) 305. 50 Edward Greenfield, Review of Britten Canticles 1–3 on Argo ZRG5277, Musical Times Vol. 103, No. 1428 (February, 1962): 108. 51 Graham Elliott, Spiritual Dimension, 95. 52 Charles Parsons, Review: Britten’s Canticle II, American Record Guide 60, no. 5 (November–December, 1997): 109. 53 Arnold Whittall, ‘Take 5, Take 2’, Gramophone (November 2001): 36.

113 recorded Abraham and Isaac (‘Abe and Ike’) with young John, but our/my recording would still be released later. This was a great disappointment for me—I so loved that work.54

However, despite Britten’s preference for the recording with Hahessy, there is no other evidence to suggest he intended the role to be sung by a man. Indeed, he conceived that role not for a man but for a woman, and he originally described Procter’s recording as ‘really wonderful’.55 There is no explanation as to why Britten later preferred Hahessy in the role of Isaac.56 Is it because Britten’s conception of the work had changed, and he now preferred a treble? Or is it because the memory of Ferrier’s performance was still so fresh, and he could not bear to have another contralto in the role after his recording with Ferrier had been destroyed? That is a possibility, considering Britten himself wrote (in a letter to Winifred Ferrier following Ferrier’s death) ‘in future one will only hear pale copies’ of Isaac.57

Regardless of Britten’s Hahessy recording, the role of Isaac is most authentic when performed by a low-voiced female singer. Procter’s recording is stronger for many reasons. First, Procter’s voice easily navigates Isaac’s vocal line, while Hahessy frequently strains to sing any note above C5 (Greenfield didn’t see this as a problem, declaring Hahessy ‘a remarkable boy alto with an almost continentally throaty timbre’).58 Procter’s voice is also much stronger, richer and fuller than Hahessy’s, and it is a better match for Pears’s penetrating tenor. Second, while Hahessy gives a metronomically, rhythmically, and melodically accurate reading of the score, Procter imbues Isaac’s line with feeling by employing rubato, and a freer, more flexible approach to rhythms and note values. Third, considering Pears was older when he recorded the canticle with Hahessy, his voice is less agile and less beautiful than in his recording with Procter. At times the tempo is faster— often due to Hahessy’s rigid interpretation of the part—which means the recording is one minute shorter than the recording with Procter, and occasionally feels rushed.

Aside from personal preferences, there are several other reasons why an alto is the most appropriate choice to sing the role of Isaac. Modern opera-going audiences are conditioned to hear mezzo-sopranos and contraltos in youthful male roles, such as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Smeaton in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, and Octavian in Strauss’s

54 Norma Procter, quoted in Letters From a Life Volume Four, ed. Philip Reed, Mervyn Cooke and Donald Mitchell (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008) 537. 55 Benjamin Britten, My Beloved Man: The Letters of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, ed. Vicki P. Stroeher, Nicholas Clark, and Jude Brimmer (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2016) 230. 56 It is possible that Britten simply relished the opportunity to work with a talented boy treble when the opportunity came along. 57 Benjamin Britten, letter to Winifred Ferrier, 11 October 1953, in Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier, 433. 58 Greenfield, Musical Times, 108.

114 . Audiences are unused to trebles and countertenors in those roles—those voice types would never be so cast. Countertenors instead perform heroic male roles (such as in the operas of Handel, Hasse, and Gluck), or solos in oratorios (such as by Handel and Bach). The standard operatic convention is to cast a low-voiced female singer in the role of a youthful male, and, as an opera composer, Britten initially adhered to that convention. In Voicing Gender Naomi André discusses the origins of the operatic pageboy tradition. She describes how, although in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries the tenor voice was becoming popular,

women’s voices continued to straddle the aural and visual representation of male and female characters. … In the same sonic world where the hero’s voice needed to more closely match the new conceptions of ‘virility’ and ‘masculinity’ of his behaviour, women’s voices needed to be heard as more feminine. 59

André concludes that the ‘pageboy travesti roles became the perfect compromise’: under that guise, the ‘cross-dressed female voice’ was apposite and convincing as a pre-pubescent teenage boy. 60 With the tenor singing the role of the hero, the young travesti roles were still important, ‘but they were not characters that had the maturity and valor needed to be the primary contender for the hand of the soprano heroine’.61

André could just have easily have been discussing Britten—not Mozart—in that particular example: Abraham’s tenor demonstrates ‘virility’ and ‘masculinity’ next to the prepubescent ‘femininity’ of Isaac’s alto. Further, a contralto as Isaac lends the character an otherworldliness—a quality that Britten was evidently trying to access when he composed the role for Ferrier. Wendy Bashant argues, ‘as contralto, she is not-bass, not-soprano. The … drag moves her out of the bind of binary gendered oppression into the world of not-man, not-woman’.62 Isaac is a boy in a biblical story, and he hears the voice of God. He is not of this realm, in the way that Cherubino is, and his characterisation by a woman further emphasises his otherworldliness. By casting Ferrier, Isaac’s character is abstracted, and the Old Testament story becomes an allegory. Emphasis is placed on the powerful themes of the corruption of innocence, and of obedience and sacrifice. Further, in 1952, there was not yet a suitable boy for the role. When Britten composed The Turn of the Screw (1954) only a few years later he worked with a young , and it was not until a few years

59 Naomi André, Voicing Gender, 103. 60 Naomi André, Voicing Gender, 103. 61 Naomi André, Voicing Gender, 103. 62 Wendy Bashant, ‘Singing in Greek Drag’, in En Travesti, ed. Corinne E. Blackmer and Patricia Juliana Smith, 234.

115 later still when he worked with John Hahessy.63 At the time of writing Canticle II, Ferrier was Britten’s ‘alto’ singer, as well as being both his friend and respected colleague.64

Britten had already seen Ferrier performing en travesti, singing the role of Orfeo in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. She also performed the aria ‘Che faró’ for her part in the fundraising recital with Pears and Britten. The idea of Ferrier-as-male was therefore present, not only Britten’s mind, but in her audience’s mind, too. And it was a role in which Ferrier was comfortable.

MUSICAL SCORE Canticle II begins with an arpeggiated E♭ major chord without the fifth (Example 19). Donald Mitchell refers to this ‘exposition’ as the ‘motivic kernel of the entire piece’.65

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Example 19: Benjamin Britten, ‘Abraham’, Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, for Alto, Tenor and Piano, opus 51, 1952, bars 1–2.

This clear statement of tonality is not repeated until much later in the piece, at bar 248 when the voice of God returns, which suggests Britten’s musical assertion of God’s authority.66 In this beginning section, the words of God (combination of tenor and alto

63 David Hemmings (1941–2003) was a British actor, and as a boy worked on a number of productions with Britten, including (1949) in 1952, and Turn of the Screw (1954) for which he created the role of Miles. 64 In 1947 Britten composed the role of Harry in Albert Herring (1947) for David Spenser, but Harry was part of a trio of children, and not a central character like Miles in Turn of the Screw. 65 Eric Roseberry, ‘Abraham and Isaac Revisited: Reflections on a Theme and Its Inversion’, in On Mahler and Britten: Essays in Honour of Donald Mitchell on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Philip Reed (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1995) 255. 66 Roseberry, On Mahler and Britten, 256.

116 voices, Example 20) are to be sung in rhythmic unison and close, occasionally dissonant, harmony.

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Example 20: Britten, ‘I will that so it be’, Abraham and Isaac, bar 6.

At the conclusion of the prologue, the alto line holds an E♭4 for four and a half beats, which dovetails into the tenor’s E♭5. This, combined with a tonal shift down to a D♭, signifies the beginning of the next section, and the introduction of the voices of Abraham (tenor) and Isaac (alto). According to Eric Roseberry, D♭ is the key of ‘Abraham’s obedient submission to God’s will’ and, later, ‘Isaac’s farewell to his father’.67 Isaac’s first vocal entry (bar 30), ‘Father I am all ready’, in A major, is a response to the preceding bass line: a scalic motif grouped in alternating sets of quavers and triplet quavers (Example 21). That simple effect suggests a young Isaac stumbling up the hill, eagerly following—and keen to please—his father. The equally simple but lovely vocal line—in 6/8 time signature, as opposed to the previous 2/4 for the piano, and in a similarly alternating pattern of grouped quavers (Example 22)—is effective for two reasons: it has the charm of a children’s nursery rhyme, and, for its pianissimo marking, narrow intervals, and range of a fifth, is an easy entry for a potentially ill and tired singer, who may struggle to maintain stamina throughout the almost seventeen-minute work. Isaac’s repeated lines (‘Father I am all ready’ and ‘I will essay to follow’) reaffirm his commitment to his father, and his eagerness to obey.

67 Roseberry, On Mahler and Britten, 256.

117

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Example 21: Britten, bass line, Abraham and Isaac, bars 20–24.

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Example 22: Britten, ‘Father, I am all ready’, Abraham and Isaac, bars 30–33.

Britten gives the direction (taken from the Chester Miracle Play) that ‘Abraham being minded to slay his son Isaac, lifts up his hands, and saith the following’, at which moment Abraham sings of his heartbreak at being commanded to sacrifice his son.68 Now (beginning at bar 73), the piano plays a tremolo between D♭ and E♭: a dissonant, crushing combination of God’s and Abraham’s keys. Abraham momentarily reverts to a variation of Isaac’s initial melody, as he placates Isaac before revealing God’s command. Although Abraham’s line alternates between straightforward melody and wild, emotional outbursts in the form of wide intervallic leaps and sudden dynamic changes, Isaac’s line still has a narrower range both melodically and emotionally. Again, this character distinction forms two functions: first to distinguish Isaac’s youthful and lighthearted boyishness from his father’s

68 The text instruction in Britten’s edition of the play reads ‘Abraham, beinge mynded to sleye his sonne Isaake, leiftes up his hands, and saith fowlowinge’. From ‘The Sacrifice of Isaac’, Chester Plays, English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes, ed. Alfred Pollard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927) 22.

118 comparatively more emotionally developed anguish, and, second, to render the vocal line easily navigable for a physically weakened singer. For example, after Isaac discovers his life must be sacrificed, Britten gives him one full page of music to himself (beginning bar 102), as he desperately grapples with his father’s devastating revelation, and, in denial, tries to convince his father to act otherwise:

Alas! Father, is that your will, your ownë child for to spill Upon this hillës brink? If I have trespassed in any degree, With a yard you may beat me; Put up your sword, if your will be, For I am but a child’.

Throughout this whole twenty-bar section, the vocal line spans a range of only a seventh, and does not go below an E4 or above D5. Instead, Britten creates drama through rhythm in the melody, dynamics, and harmony in the piano accompaniment.

Eventually (from bar 146), Abraham and Isaac resign themselves to their terrifying roles of slayer and slain, and to each other they sing their farewells (from bar 214). The piano accompaniment plays an oscillating quaver pattern, similar to the accompaniment in Mozart’s lullaby-like Abendempfindung (Example 23); a song that meditates on the theme of death.

Example 23: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, ‘Abendempfindung’, 1787, bars 1-4.

Anticipating his own sacrifice, Isaac impetuously sings on a repeated C♯ (Example 24) with an increasingly louder dynamic marking, finally declaring ‘Almighty God in majesty! My soul I offer unto thee!’. Although that would not usually have been challengingly high for Ferrier, it is the most dramatically charged music Britten required of her during the entire piece. Isaac’s emotional climax is in a marked contrast to both Lucretia’s aria ‘Flower’s bring to ev’ry year’ and ‘Out on the lawn’ in Spring Symphony. On this occasion, however, Britten cleverly devised a role for Ferrier that would show off the beauty of her voice, and the potency of her dramatic stage presence, whilst avoiding anything that would test her weakened physical state.

119

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Example 24: Britten, ‘I see that I shall die’, Abraham and Isaac, bars 241–245.

God’s arpeggio sounds once again, as he instructs Abraham ‘Lay not thy sword in no manner on Isaac, thy dear darling’, and, upon receiving this news, Abraham and Isaac quietly rejoice in God’s pardon. According to Peter Evans,

The two voices, no longer characters within the drama, move in loose canon, the repetitions of their coda broadening to a hymnic last strain … and a distant radiance from the divine image of [the opening] arpeggio. Thus, with sonata-like precision, the themes of God and man, originally divided by the greatest void (E♭—A), have been reconciled after the central dramatic action.69

69 Peter Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten (J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 1979) 407.

120 RECEPTION Critics responded with warmth and enthusiasm to Ferrier’s portrayal of Isaac. Her recent as yet unnamed illness did not go unnoticed, particularly following a fall before the first performance in Nottingham. While some believed that she had recovered from her illness, she in fact had not. The title of one review declared ‘Audience Did Not Know She Was in Pain’, and explained, ‘the audience who listened to the superb singing of Miss Kathleen Ferrier at the Nottingham Albert Hall last night were unaware that she was in considerable pain during the performance, owing to a strained back’.70 After the second performance in Birmingham, her singing was praised despite her illness:

Miss Ferrier’s voice proved none the worse for her recent illness, or for an accident which had befallen her at Nottingham on the previous evening. It is richer than ever. I have seen it written that she is not a dramatic singer. Her performance of Gluck’s Che Faró was sufficient answer, as was also her delicious comedy in Morley two-voice canzonets and in the Mopsa- Corydon duet from Purcell’s Fairy Queen.71

The same reviewer was more critical of Pears, whose voice he described as ‘not one of the finest’.72 Another reviewer took no such issue, and praised the equal efforts of Ferrier, Pears, and Britten, singling Ferrier out in particular as ‘in a class by herself as a contralto. Her tone is rich in any register, her enunciation flawless and above all there is a sympathy and an understanding about all that she that makes the music live’.73 After the performance at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, the reviewer for Manchester Guardian did criticise her folk songs, considering her voice ill-fitted to them: ‘Miss Ferrier, whose voice has probably no equal in this country to-day, does not take too easily in such music, and was less moving in “O Waly, Waly” than many lesser singers’.74 However, one wonders if this unusual aberration was to do with fatigue relating to her cancer (and fall in Nottingham only five nights previous), rather than a sudden struggle with the folk songs, usually the bread and butter of her repertoire?

CONCLUSION In Canticle II Britten crafted a gift for the ill Kathleen Ferrier and her still-beautiful voice, not just in her vocal line, but also in the way he dramatised the role of Isaac using harmony, meter, rhythm, and in his writing for the piano. Scholars often focus more on what Britten

70 ‘Audience Did Not Know She Was in Pain’, Nottingham Evening News, 22 January 1952, clipping in KFA. 71 ‘Recital in Birmingham Town Hall’, Birmingham Post, 23 January 1952, clipping in KFA. 72 ‘Recital in Birmingham Town Hall’, Birmingham Post. 73 A.F., ‘Notable Triple Recital’, January 1952, clipping in KFA. 74 C.M., ‘English Opera Group: Britten’s New Work’, Manchester Guardian, 26 January 1952, clipping in KFA.

121 made of those other musical elements, rather than the concessions Britten made for Ferrier in Isaac’s vocal line. For example, Graham Johnson explains how ‘the piano functions as commentator and master of ceremonies’ when ‘the moment of sacrifice’ is not delivered by the singers but ‘is in the hands of the pianist’. Again, when ‘God eventually intervenes it is with a terrific thunderclap, a massive tremolando on the piano’.75 Johnson further claims that, although the part was written for Ferrier, ‘the composer made her voice remain within a boy’s vocal possibilities. Indeed this is music designed to appeal to, and be accessible for, a young musician’.76 There was no precedent for Britten writing music for one singer whilst imagining it being performed by another, as yet unknown singer in the future. Rather, he wrote for the forces at hand, and for the then-current strengths and weaknesses of his performers. Johnson neglects to comprehend how Ferrier’s ill health played a part not only in Britten’s vocal writing, but also in his expressive writing for the piano, which, as Johnson writes, becomes a commentator on the drama.

Ferrier herself was touched by Britten’s final composition for her, and in a letter to Peter Diamand she admitted, ‘the Canticle is a pet—I think you would love it—very simple and moving—I cried all the way to Ald[e]burgh in the train learning it—but I have recovered now!’77

75 Graham Johnson, ‘Voice and Piano’, in The Britten Companion, ed. Christopher Palmer (Faber & Faber: London, 1994) 295. 76 Graham Johnson, Britten, Voice and Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) 249. 77 Letter to Peter Diamand, 1 February 1952, Ferrier, Letters and Diaries, 215. Peter Diamand (1913–1998) was director of the Edinburgh Festival.

122 CONCLUSION

Sixty-five years after her death, Kathleen Ferrier’s voice continues to generate considerable interest. In 2017, SOMM Recordings unearthed and released a set of previously unpublished Ferrier recordings.1 Robert Matthew-Walker for Musical Opinion writes that the CD is the ‘latest exemplar’ of the Ferrier ‘phenomenon’, expressing that ‘time and time again, on hearing her performances on this disc, one is moved by a number of factors: the purity of her voice, her profound musicianship, [and] her natural ability to convey the essence of the work in question’.2 He concludes, ‘after so long a time, such artistry comes so very rarely to our troubled world’.3 In Fanfare, reviewer James A. Altena is even more emphatic, declaring that ‘Ferrier’s voice and artistry are beyond praise’.4 The unequivocally positive responses to the arguably low quality recordings of a long-dead singer attest to Ferrier’s enduring legacy and the extraordinary power her singular voice. On the other hand, Rupert Christiansen’s description of Ferrier as a ‘consoling angel and the nation’s darling’, and Lucy Stevens’s work in Whattalife! implicitly diminish what in real life she actually achieved.5 To liken her to an angel is to suggest that her voice was more a heavenly gift than the result of exceptional dedication, and to portray her as a matronly housewife contradicts the reality of her young life cut short. By 1953, at the pinnacle of her remarkable career, Ferrier had the skills, knowledge, training, and technical ability to tackle more roles, and would likely have done so.6 Further, Ferrier should not be judged as a singer uncomfortable with opera owing to her mere two operatic roles, but a singer whose operatic potential was never fully realised due to the abrupt end to her career and life.

Among Ferrier’s greatest accomplishments were her realisations of the roles Britten wrote for her. As a singer and colleague, Ferrier appealed to Benjamin Britten for several

1 Kathleen Ferrier Remembered, with Kathleen Ferrier, Gerald Moore, Frederick Stone, and Bruno Walter, recorded 1947–1952, SOMM264, 2017, 1 compact disc. The recordings were sourced from the National Sound Archive at the British Library and from the collection of engineer Kenneth Leech 2 Robert Matthew-Walker, ‘Kathleen Ferrier Remembered’, Musical Opinion 1512 (July–September 2017): 43. 3 Matthew-Walker, ‘Kathleen Ferrier Remembered’, 43. 4 James A. Altena, ‘Kathleen Ferrier Remembered’, Fanfare: The Magazine for Serious Record Collectors 41, no. 2 (November–December 2017): 550. 5 Rupert Christiansen, ‘Kathleen Ferrier: Consoling Angel and the Nation’s Darling’, in Telegraph, 17 January 2012, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/9019989/Kathleen-Ferrier-Consoling-angel-and- the-nations-darling.html. 6 By the time Ferrier died she was comfortable performing as Orfeo—demonstrated by the fact that she was able to perform the role months before she died when she was already ill—and had she lived she would no doubt have branched out into other operatic repertoire. For a start, she may have performed Wagner’s Erda in (1869–1876) and the title role in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689). Other singers who enjoyed similar success—such as Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1861–1936) and Janet Baker (b.1933)—had full careers that lasted decades, and ended in retirement.

123 reasons. They were a similar age—both in their early thirties—when they first worked together in 1946 on The Rape of Lucretia, and while Ferrier already possessed a well- developed instrument, she did not have a large, diva-like temperament with which Britten had to contend. She was somewhat of an underdog—although of a similar age to her fellow singers and the composer, she lacked their collective experience. According to Britten, ‘I think we were all aware that a star was rising among us, although no one could have behaved less like a star than Kathleen did’.7 The fact that she had not developed a fragile ego meant that, despite her inexperience, she looked up to her colleagues as mentors and quickly learned the art of operatic performance. Britten was not only working with a beautiful voice that he could use to his advantage as Lucretia, he was also working with an intelligent and receptive personality, a person unlikely to try to exert creative control over any aspect of his work. In 1946 Ferrier was relatively well known and very well liked, and having her name on the bill would likely draw in audience members. Ferrier also offered Britten something in the way of her agreeable countenance. In performance she was equipped to portray the deepest anger, solemnest grief, most heartrending despair, passionate love and utter jubilance, while in life she was practical, sensible, fun and humble. In sum, Ferrier was an ideal performer and an ideal colleague.

Britten, too, had much to offer Ferrier. Ferrier was pursuing a career as a singer, but had not yet had the chance to perform in opera—one of the more reliable employment options for a singer, and a platform likely to raise her profile amongst future employers. While Ferrier’s career involved more concerts and recitals than operas, that first foray into the genre rapidly increased her fame. Working with Britten on The Rape of Lucretia was somewhat of a baptism of fire—after a short rehearsal period Ferrier would be performing her first opera at a top-tier festival with a reputation for fine productions. Unlike other singers of her talent, she had not moved through the operatic ranks—cutting her teeth in amateur productions, covering roles in professional productions whilst performing in the chorus, appearing in bit parts, and finally landing principal roles—Ferrier was instead propelled to the highest level. That first collaboration liberated her from her previously conservative repertoire choices and revealed paths down which she may never have otherwise ventured. Further, she ‘created’ the role of Lucretia onstage, which meant that her name became synonymous with the role. That she continued to work with Britten as his fame increased, and his work with Ferrier as her fame increased, was a mutually beneficial situation.

7 Benjamin Britten, ‘Three Premieres’ (1954), in Britten on Music, ed. Paul Kildea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 124.

124 What Ferrier and Britten offered each other artistically was significant. The unusual timbre of Ferrier’s voice, her excellent musicianship, and her capacity for low singing all informed Britten’s compositions for her. He used those qualities differently in each of the three works written for her. In The Rape of Lucretia he used the special quality of her then- uncomfortable top register to portray Lucretia’s shock, rage and alarm following her rape, and he used her warm, rich low notes to highlight Lucretia’s resolve and humanity shortly before her suicide. In Spring Symphony Britten called upon Ferrier to use the finest edges of her voice to depict the lovely fresh budbursts that announce the beginning of the pretty English springtime, and he used her ‘dark’ tone, ‘serious mien’, and the upper dynamic limit of that same voice to depict the violation of his beloved England following World War Two.8 Finally, in Canticle II, when Ferrier’s body had been ravaged by cancer and the various aggressive cancer treatments, Britten gave the singer a young male character, whose youthful voice and body she could personify without betraying the fragility of her own. Canticle II was especially crafted to show off the beauty of Ferrier’s luscious middle register, and did not demand anything too taxing, enabling her to sustain herself for the work’s almost seventeen-minute duration. More than that, Britten crafted the piano and tenor roles to carry the majority of the dramatic burden, excusing Ferrier from the potentially tiring task of stage theatrics.

Without Ferrier, the role of Lucretia, the alto solos in Spring Symphony and the role of Isaac would have been conceived differently. Had Britten composed those pieces for another singer—say, Nancy Evans—the music would have different tessituras and ranges, and would feature different vowel sounds on different notes. It would no doubt be altogether different music. Ferrier’s voice gave Britten options, and it prompted him to write for her in that very specific way. For her part, she cleverly and characteristically used her voice at certain points in the music, superimposing over the score her own unique sound while enhancing Britten’s notes and reinforcing his intentions.

In performance of all three works, ‘the locus of creation is not, in short, simply shifted from the composer to the performer; rather, the fact of live performance encourages its relocation to other places’.9 In the collaborations of Ferrier and Britten, the ‘locus of creation’ was shifted on to a third source—the sonorities of Ferrier’s voice itself. If, in performance, Ferrier ‘wrested the composing voice away from the librettist and composer

8 Britten, ‘Three Premieres’, 125. 9 Carolyn Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, in Musicology and Difference, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993) 235.

125 who wrote the score’, her instrument also determined the very sound of that score.10 Her voice was written onto the page, and she created that music on stage. Or, in Abbate’s words, she became a ‘maker’ of the ‘musical sonority’ in all three compositions.11 Through her unusual contralto voice and her ability to embody a given role, Ferrier had the capacity to contest male (Britten’s) authority, and in performance she became a dominant partner. She was not a vessel, delivering Britten’s music to the audience, but a great artist involved in the act of musical creation.

After she died Ferrier assumed almost divine status, as John Barbirolli wrote in a letter to her sister Winifred:

She was already beginning to acquire a radiance and loveliness not of this earth. The kind of radiance she suffused us with when she sang the Angel in Gerontius, a radiance and comfort she will continue to give this troubled world, through her Blessed Art, as long as this poor world remains civilised.12

Barbirolli’s words were prescient—Ferrier’s records continue to inspire listeners, and continue to perpetuate her legendary status. Britten’s music for Ferrier, however, remains evidence of the human qualities—the glories and the weaknesses—of her voice. According to Britten, she sang that music ‘with her own inimitable warmth, simplicity, and devoted care, as indeed she sang everything—as if it were the most important in the world’.13 Theirs was a symbiotic relationship: Ferrier was not simply Britten’s ‘mouthpiece’, she was an equal partner in the production and performance of his music.

10 Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, 254. 11 Abbate, ‘Opera; Or, the Envoicing of Women’, 228. 12 Sir John Barbirolli, letter to Winifred Ferrier, in Letters and Diaries of Kathleen Ferrier (2003) revised and enlarged edition, ed. Christopher Fifield (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011) 433–4. 13 Britten, ‘Three Premieres’, 127.

126 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archives:

British Library Sound Archive, British Library, London, UK.

Britten-Pears Archive, Britten-Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK. Correspondence between Benjamin Britten and Kathleen Ferrier. Correspondence between Benjamin Britten and Winifred Ferrier. Correspondence between Peter Pears and Winifred Ferrier. Correspondence between Theodore Uppman and Jean Uppman. Nancy Evans and Eric Crozier Collection.

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Books:

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127 Auden, W.H. Look, Stranger!. London: Faber & Faber, 1936.

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128 Britten, Beth. My Brother Benjamin. Abbotsbrook, Bourne End, Buckinghamshire: Kensal Press, 1986.

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Donaldson, Ian. The Rapes of Lucretia: A Myth and Its Transformations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.

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Feldman, Martha. The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds. California: University of California Press, 2015.

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Obey, André. Lucrece: from Le viol de Lucrèce. Translated by Thornton Niven Wilder. Boston: H. Mifflin, 1933.

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132 Reed, Philip, Mervyn Cooke, and Donald Mitchell, editors. Letters From a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten 1913–1976. Volume 4, 1952–57. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008.

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Roseberry, Eric. ‘Abraham and Isaac Revisited: Reflections on a Theme and Its Inversion’. In On Mahler and Britten: Essays in Honour of Donald Mitchell on his Seventieth Birthday. Edited by Philip Reed, 253–66. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995.

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– – –. Voices: Singers and Critics. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1992.

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133 Wiebe, Heather. Britten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory In Postwar Reconstruction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Articles:

Altena, James A. ‘Kathleen Ferrier Remembered’. Fanfare: The Magazine for Serious Record Collectors 41, no. 2 (November–December 2017): 549–50.

André, Naomi. ‘Veiled Messages and Encoded Meanings: Exoticism, Verdi, and Women’s Lower Voices’. Ars Lyrica 11 (2000): 1–22.

Barringer, Tom. ‘I Am Native, Rooted Here: Benjamin Britten, Samuel Palmer, and the Neo-Romantic Pastoral’. Art History 31, no. 1 (February 2011): 126–65.

Barsties, Ben, Rudi Verfaillie, Peter Dicks, and Youri Maryn. ‘Is the Speaking Fundamental Frequency in Females Related to Body Height?’. Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology 41 (2016): 27–32.

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Baroody, M.M. K. Barnes-Burroughs, M.C. Rodriguez, D.M. Sataloff, and R.T. Sataloff. ‘Self-Reported Changes in the Professional Singing Voice After Surgical Intervention Treatment for Breast Cancer: A Survey Pilot Study for Female Professional Singers’. Journal of Voice 27, no. 2 (March 2013): 225–29.

Bartlett, Neil and Paule Constable. ‘Staging Britten’s Canticles: “Everything about them is potent”’. Guardian, 20 November 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/20/neil-bartlett-staging-brittens- canticles.

Borgen, Patrick. ‘Breast Cancer in the 20th Century: Quest for Ideal Therapy’. Ochsner Journal 2. no. 1 (January 2000): 5–9.

Britten, Benjamin. ‘England and the Folk-Art Problem’. Modern Music 18, no. 2 (January– February 1941): 71–75.

Callan, Edward. ‘W.H. Auden’s Plays for the Group Theatre: From Revelation to Revelation’. Comparative Drama 12, No. 4 (Winter 1978–79): 326–339.

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Christiansen, Rupert. ‘Kathleen Ferrier: Consoling Angel and the Nation’s Darling’. Telegraph, 17 January 2012.

134 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/9019989/Kathleen-Ferrier- Consoling-angel-and-the-nations-darling.html.

– – –. ‘The Rape of Lucretia, Glyndebourne, Review: Piercingly Intelligent, Immaculately Realised’. Telegraph, 6 July 2015. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/glyndebourne/11716565/The-Rape-of- Lucretia-Glyndebourne-review-piercingly-intelligent-immaculately-realised.html.

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Dervan, Michael. ‘How Elwes met Britten: “I Was a Bit of a Thug, but I Could Sing”’. Irish Times, 28 November 2013. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/how-elwes-met-britten- i-was-a-bit-of-a-thug-but-i-could-sing-1.1609394.

Frantzen, Allen J. ‘Tears for Abraham: The Chester Play of Abraham and Isaac and Antisacrifice in works by Wilfred Owen, Benjamin Britten, and Derek Jarman’. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 445–76.

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Jack, Ian. ‘Klever Kaff’. Granta 76 (Winter 2001): 87–132.

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Lee, Jonathan Rhodes. ‘From Amelia to Calista and Beyond: Sentimental Heroines, ‘Fallen’ Women and Handel’s Oratorio Revisions for Susanna Cibber’. Cambridge Opera Journal 27, no. 1 (Cambridge University Press, 2015): 1–34.

Matthew-Walker, Robert. ‘Kathleen Ferrier Remembered’. Musical Opinion 1512 (July– September 2017): 43.

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White, Michael. ‘Production from Copenhagen: The Rape of Lucretia’. Opera Now (July– August 2009): 62.

Whittall, Arnold. ‘Take 5, Take 2’. Gramophone (November 2001): 36.

Yan, Nan, Manwa L. Ng, Mok Ka Man, and Tsz Hin To. ‘Vocal Tract Dimensional Characteristics of Professional Male and Female Singers with Different Types of Singing Voices’. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 15 (5): 484–491.

Wiebe, Heather. ‘Now and England’: Britten’s Gloriana and the ‘New Elizabethans’. Cambridge Opera Journal 17, no. 2 (2015): 141–72.

Papers and theses:

André, Naomi. ‘Azucena, Eboli and Amneris: Verdi’s Writing for Women’s Lower Voices’. PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1996.

Brenner, Phyllis Ann. ‘The Emergence of the English Contralto’. Doctor of Education thesis, Columbia University Teachers College, 1989.

136 Ch’ng, Xin Ying. ‘Kathleen Ferrier’s Voice and Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia’. Conference paper, Royal Music Association Research Students’ Conference. University of Southampton, 3–5 January 2013.

Firth, Katherine. ‘Queen of the Boys Tonight: Hedli Anderson and the ‘Auden Gang’’. Conference paper, Louis MacNeice Centenary Conference and Celebration, 2007, Belfast.

Jennings, John Wells. ‘The Influence of W.H. Auden on Benjamin Britten’. DMA thesis. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1979.

Mertz, Margaret Stover. ‘History, Criticism and the Sources of Britten’s Opera The Rape of Lucretia’. PhD thesis. Harvard University, 1990.

O’Brien, Betty Teresa. ‘Australian Contralto Ada Crossley (1871–1929): A Critical Biography’. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2010.

O’Loughlin, Niall. ‘The Sea and the Spring: Links with Nature Between Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten’. Conference paper, Ljuljana Festival, Slovenia, 12–15 March 2012.

Samuel, Gordon. ‘Benjamin Britten’s Canticles I, II and III: A Structural and Stylistic Analysis’. PhD thesis, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1974.

Scott, Elizabeth Barrett. ‘The Canticles of Benjamin Britten’. MA thesis, McGill University, 1983.

Strauss, Robert. ‘The Five Song Cycles for Voice and Piano by Benjamin Britten Written Specifically for Peter Pears’. DMA thesis, West Virginia University, 2006.

Totten, Nancy Kinsey. ‘The English Victorian Drawing-Room Ballad: A Product of Its Time’. PhD thesis, Indiana University, 1997.

Vickers, Justin M. ‘‘The Ineffable Moments will be Harder Won’: The Genesis, Compositional Process, and Early Performance History of Michael Tippett’s The Heart’s Assurance’. DMA thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011.

Youell, Amber. ‘Opera at the Crossroads of Tradition and Reform in Gluck’s Vienna’. PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2012.

Websites:

‘Britons of Distinction’. Collect GB Stamps. 23 February 2012. Accessed 5 April 2018. http://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=22622.

137 Britten, Benjamin. Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac. With Janet Baker, Peter Pears and Graham Johnson. Aldeburgh Festival, 1977. Accessed 13 September 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkIcsT_fjAI&feature=youtu.be.

‘Dick Shepherd’. Peace Pledge Union. Accessed 12 September 2017. http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/people/pst_dick.html.

‘English Opera Group Presents’ programme. Britten Pears Foundation. Accessed 5 April 2018. http://www.bpfcatalogue.org/view/365658.

‘The International Phonetic Alphabet’. International Phonetic Association. Accessed 29 March 2018. https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/sites/default/files/IPA_Kiel_2015.pd f.

‘Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn’. Les Films de la Memoire. Accessed 16 April 2018. http://lesfilmsx.cluster014.ovh.net/wordpress/en/kathleen-ferrier/.

Kathleen Ferrier Society. Accessed 1 March 2018. http://www.kathleenferrier.org.uk/index.php/bursary.

Kathleen Ferrier Awards. . Accessed 1 March 2018. https://ferrierawards.org.uk/.

Monash Health. ‘Feelings After Sexual Assault’. South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault & Family Violence leaflet. 13 May 2013. https://www.secasa.com.au/assets/Documents/feelings-after-sexual-assault.pdf.

Müller, Willhelm, and Franz Schubert. ‘Der hirt auf dem felsen’. Translated by Bard Suverkrop. IPA Source. Accessed 10 July 2017. https://www-ipasource- com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/der-hirt-auf-dem-felsen-7493.html.

Munton, Alan. ‘Lucretia Not Written for Ferrier?’. Ronald Duncan Literary Foundation. Accessed 19 April 2017. http://www.ronaldduncanfoundation.co.uk/kathleen-ferrier- and-the-rape-of-lucretia.

‘Peter Pears, Kathleen Ferrier, Benjamin Britten’. Bromide print, 1952. National Portrait Gallery. Accessed 4 April 2018. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw161744/Peter-Pears-Kathleen- Ferrier-Benjamin-Britten.

Royal Philharmonic Society. Accessed 7 March 2018. https://royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/awards/gold_medal.

Steane, J.B. ‘Henderson. Roy Galbraith (1899–2000). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Accessed 14 March 2018. http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au.

138

Stevens, Lucy. Kathleen Ferrier Whattalife!. Accessed 7 March 2018. https://kathleenferrierwhattalife.com/.

Scores

Britten, Benjamin. Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac, for Alto, Tenor and Piano, Op. 51. Text from the Chester Miracle Play. London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1953.

– – –. Spring Symphony (1949). London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1950.

Britten, Benjamin and Ronald Duncan. The Rape of Lucretia: An Opera in Two Acts, 1946, revised 1947. London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1949.

Chausson, Ernest. Poème de l’amour et de la mer, Op. 19. Paris: Well-Tempered Press, 1917.

Elgar, Edward. ‘Sea Slumber Song’, Sea Pictures: A Cycle of Five Songs, Op. 37. Arranged for piano. London: Boosey & Co., 1899.

Gluck, Christoph Wilibald and Ranieri de Calzibigi. Orfeo ed Euridice. London: Bärenreiter, 2014.

Mahler, Gustav. Das Lied von der Erde. Vocal score arranged by Erwin Stein. London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1942.

Mendelssohn, Felix. Elijah, Op. 70. New York: G. Schirmer, 1892.

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. ‘Abendempfindung’. In Lieder für Gesang und Klavier. Frankfurt: Peters, 1956.

Recordings:

Britten, Benjamin. Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac. Britten Rarities. With Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Norma Procter. Recorded 1967. Eloquence ELQ4802296, 2012. Compact disc.

– – –. Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac. The Canticles. With Benjamin Britten, John Hahessy and Peter Pears. Recorded 1961. London Records 425 716-2, 1990. 1 compact disc.

– – –. The Rape of Lucretia. Aldeburgh Festival and English National Opera. Conducted by Paul Daniel. Directed by David McVicar. With Sarah Connolly, and Christopher Maltman et al. Opus Arte, 2001. 1 digital video disc.

139 – – –. Rape of Lucretia. English Opera Group Orchestra. Reginald Goodall with Kathleen Ferrier, Edmund Donleavy, Otakar Kraus, Owen Brannigan, Anna Pollak, Joan Cross, Margaret Ritchie. Recorded 2 October 1946. Gala GL 100.560, 2000, 2 compact discs.

– – –. The Rape of Lucretia. English Opera Group Chamber Orchestra. Sir Reginald Goodall, with Nancy Evans et al. Recorded July/October, 1947. EMI Classics 7 64727 2, 1993. 2 compact discs.

– – –. The Rape of Lucretia. London Philharmonic Orchestra and Glyndebourne Opera. Directed by Fiona Shaw. Leo Hussain with Christine Rice, Duncan Rock, et al. Opus Arte, 2015. Blu-ray disc, 1080p HD.

– – –. Spring Symphony. Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Choir, Boys Chorus of the St. Willibrord Church, Eduard van Beinum with Kathleen Ferrier, Peter Pears, Jo Vincent. Recorded 9 July 1949. Decca 4783589, 2012, 14 compact discs.

Gluck, Christoph Wilibald. ‘What Is life?’. Orfeo ed Euridice. In Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete EMI Recordings. Kathleen Ferrier and Gerald Moore. Recorded 30 June 1944, EMI 9562842, 2012. 3 compact discs.

Handel, George Frederic. Messiah (Highlights). Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Choral Society, Sir Malcolm Sargent, with Norma Procter et al. Recorded 1965. Reader’s Digest RC7-193, 1996.

– – –. Messiah. English Chamber Orchestra, Ambrosian Singers, Sir Charles Mackerras, with Janet Baker. Recorded 1967. Warner Classics 2435694493, 2005.

Kathleen Ferrier: A Film by Diane Perelsztejn. Directed by Diane Perelsztejn. Decca 0440 074 3479 6, 2012. 1 digital video disc. 1 compact disc.

Kathleen Ferrier: An Ordinary Diva. Directed by Suzanne Phillips. Decca, 2004. 1 digital video disc.

Kathleen Ferrier Remembered. With Kathleen Ferrier, Gerald Moore, Frederick Stone, and Bruno Walter. Recorded 1947–1952. SOMM264, 2017, 1 compact disc.

Kathleen Ferrier: The Complete Decca Recordings: Centenary Edition. Recorded February 1945 to September 1952. Decca 4783589, 2012. 14 compact discs. 1 digital video disc.

Pears, Peter et al. ‘The Singer and the Person: A Portrait of a Well-Loved Person’. BBC Records. REGL 368, 1979.

140

Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Mathew, Alexandra

Title: ‘Darling Kath’: Benjamin Britten’s music for Kathleen Ferrier

Date: 2018

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/220275

File Description: Redacted thesis

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