Here Where the River Forever Divides Them: A Hybrid Opera & Noh Performance

In 1956, the famous British composer Benjamin Britten and his partner, the beloved tenor Peter Pears, observed two performances of the Noh play Sumida River during a world tour they took which brought them to Japan for 12 days. The performance of Noh was an experience recommended to them in the strongest terms by their friend and colleague, the British-South African novelist and poet William Plomer, who had been introduced to Noh himself during his three year sojourn in Japan during the late 1920s. After returning to England from their trip around the world, Britten met with Plomer to discuss the Japanese part of their tour, and expressed a strong desire to make his own version of the play he saw. It took him eight years, but in the summer of 1964 this Noh-inspired work debuted as a one-act church parable opera called Curlew River, which employed a libretto by Plomer, and starred Pears in the role of the Madwoman.
Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, and William Plomer, all prominent in their respective fields, were also all gay men. Though each was drawn to Japanese culture, and more specifically Noh theater, in his own unique way, they also discovered this attraction through their experience as gay men.
This performance is a hybrid production of both Britten’s Curlew River and the Noh play Sumida River on which it is based. Certain scenes from the original Noh have been inserted back into the story to show through performance the process of artistic translation from Noh to Opera, and the three men Britten, Pears, and Plomer have been inserted as supporting characters to express how each of them connected to Noh drama through their sexuality.

Host or Publisher Boston University World Languages & Literatures