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Archive Treasures: Young Men and Fast Cars
What if…? The archive at the Red House documents, in remarkable detail, the lives and careers of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Perhaps less…
Archive Treasures: Books for the Young and Young at Heart
Britten explained to his assistant Imogen Holst that the exuberance in the music he wrote for children arose from the fact that he was ‘still…
Archive Treasures: Britten’s centenary archive
To celebrate Britten’s 50th birthday in 1963 many of Britten’s friends and colleagues contributed to the volume ‘Tribute to Benjamin Britten on his…
Archive Treasures: Imogen Holst’s scrapbooks and The Pipers’ Guild
Amongst Imogen Holst’s papers held in our collections are ten large scrapbooks which she started as a student at the Royal College of Music in 1926,…
Archive Treasures: Britten and The Tempest
We know several stories about Britten being lured back to write for the big screen. Few such tales straddled the decades like that of his hope to work…
Archive Treasures: Britten’s wheelchair
In 1975 Benjamin Britten was a sick man: two years before he had suffered a stroke in the course of an operation to replace a failing heart valve, and…
Archive Treasures: Music manuscript for Britten’s Piano Concerto
Our archive preserves thousands of Britten’s music manuscripts from his juvenilia – his earliest notes written from the age of five – to his unfinished…
Archive Treasures: Britten and Bennett
In 1965 film director John Schlesinger approached Britten to supply a soundtrack for what would become a film classic. The composer’s reluctant decline…
Archive Treasures: Channel Air Bridge
One of the fascinations of an archive is the way that, no matter how apparently focused its content may be, other topics creep in at the edges. The…
Archive Treasures: Joan Cross’ wartime cast books
Joan Cross began her operatic career in 1923 when she joined the chorus of the Vic-Wells Opera Company, then throughout the 1930s she enjoyed success…
Archive Treasures: Decimalisation
The archive at the Red House tells the story of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears: their lives together, their creative work and how they formed part of…
Archive Treasures: Nearly A Rabbit’s Tale
Did you ever imagine Peter Pears donning a fox’s costume for an opera, or that Britten would try his hand at set design? If not read on… Amid…