Twentieth-Century British Authors and the Rise of Opera in Britain

This book is the first to examine the contributions of major British authors, as critics and librettists, to the rise of British opera in the twentieth century. Auden and Forster, as much as Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, defined British opera, which emerged as a simultaneously literary and musical project. The resulting collaborations have crucial implications for the development of our understanding of opera and literature.