“Extravagant, unacceptable, and the love literally unspeakable but not unsingable. It’s made for opera. And made for you. ‘Whereof we cannot speak, thereof one sings.’”
—Auden on Death in Venice, in The Habit of Art
In The Habit of Art, Benjamin Britten attempts to rekindle his relationship with W. H. Auden while composing Death in Venice, his last opera. Based on Thomas Mann’s short story of the same name, the opera treats Britten’s recurrent themes—the individual in society, temptation, and punishment—more directly than his previous work. The opera’s central character is a writer, Aschenbach, who fights but is ultimately destroyed by his desire for a 14-year-old boy. Alan Bennett’s play imagines that Britten’s own chaste (if not wholly innocent) friendships with some of his choir boys are on his mind, and Britten seeks out the company of his old friend as he wrestles with this story, and his own history, of desire and restraint.
Britten composed the role of Aschenbach for tenor Peter Pears, his long-time partner. The opera is considered Britten’s masterwork, praised for its musical complexity and stylistic restraint, as well as its theatrical innovation in casting the boy as a dancer—the audience never hears from the object of Aschenbach’s obsession, but gazes on him as the writer does. According to New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini, the score, “rich with complexity, regret, and ambiguity, powerfully conveys the vulnerability of the ascetic and intellectual Aschenbach as he is overcome by the vision of a beautiful boy, causing him to question every choice he has made and the worth of his art.”
In sharp contrast to W. H. Auden—who spoke and wrote openly about his relationships, dalliances, and flings with men—Britten never publicly acknowledged his relationship with Pears, although the two lived together from 1936 until Britten’s death in 1976. Britten himself characterized Death in Venice to his friend and music critic Donald Mitchel as “everything that Peter and I have stood for.” Mitchell sees in the score “the ideals of order as distinct from chaos, discipline rather than a false freedom, and love rather than an unbridled sensuality that guided [Britten and Pears].” With its interrogation and ultimate vindication of restraint in the face of desire, Death in Venice is widely seen as an allegory for Britten’s life-long relationship with his own passions, desires, and discipline.
Britten denied even the basic needs of his body to create the opera—he was ill when he composed the opera, postponing heart surgery until after he’d completed the piece. He would ultimately suffer a stroke during the surgery and die from complications three years after the opera’s premiere.