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Music

Often baffling but ultimately entertaining: Britten’s Paul Bunyan reviewed

15 September 2018

9:00 AM

15 September 2018

9:00 AM

‘I feel I have learned lots about what not to write for the theatre…’ There’s a prevailing idea that the ever-precocious Benjamin Britten was an operatic natural — a composer whose gift sprang fully formed with the première of Peter Grimes in 1945. But that’s not strictly true. Go back just a few years to 1941 and you’ll find Paul Bunyan — the oversized skeleton in Britten’s musical closet.

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