Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk. When he was 12, Britten began regular lessons with the composer Frank Bridge (1879-1941). In 1930, at the age of 16 and with many compositions already to his name, Britten entered the Royal College of Music in London.Between 1935 and 1939, Britten worked for the GPO Film Unit, composing music for such films as Night Mail (1936), with words by WH Auden. His friendship with Auden at this time resulted in various works, including a Pacifist March for the Peace Pledge Union. In 1937, his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, for string orchestra, won him international acclaim.
In 1937, Britten met the tenor, Peter Pears, who was to become his lifelong companion and fellow worker. He bought a house at Snape in Suffolk, but with the approach of war, Britten, a convinced pacifist, departed to North America, following the example of Auden. It was there that he composed his first work for the stage, the operetta Paul Bunyan (1941), with a libretto by Auden.
In 1942, Britten and Pears returned to England, where Britten's pacifism confirmed his exemption from military service. On the journey back, he wrote his celebrated choral work, Hymn to Saint Cecilia, with a text by Auden. Britten's war work took the form of many UK-wide recital-tours with Pears, and they also gave recitals in prisons.
Britten was working on Peter Grimes, the opera for which he is best known, from the early 1940s until its completion in February 1945. It was an outstanding world-league success for the 31-year-old composer. The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946) was a further massive success at this time.
Other operas followed, including The Rape of Lucretia (1946), Albert Herring (1947), Billy Budd (1951), Gloriana (1953) - written for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation - The Turn of the Screw (1954) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960). These and others have brought Britten international acclaim as the finest composer of English operas since Henry Purcell in the 17th century.
In 1948, the first Aldeburgh Festival took place, an annual fixture founded by Britten and Pears which has continued ever since. Many of Britten's compositions were performed for the first time at Aldeburgh, and it is considered one of the most important English music festivals. In 1955, Britten went on a world tour holiday which brought him into contact with gamelan music in Bali and No drama in Japan. In 1961, Britten conducted the first performance of his celebrated War Requiem, commissioned for the reopening of the war-damaged Coventry Cathedral in the English Midlands.
In 1963, Britten visited the Soviet Union, later composing his famous Cello Symphony, written for the Russian cellist Rostropovich. This received its premiere in Moscow in March 1964. In the same year, Britten composed his so-called "church parable" Curlew River, which combined influences from the Japanese No theatre and English medieval religious drama. Two other church parables, The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968), followed.
In 1965, Britten received the Order of Merit and in 1976 he was made a life peer. Among his finest later pieces is the opera Death in Venice (1973), based on the novella by Thomas Mann. As one critic writes, the opera "sums up the conflict of innocence and experience that obsessed him all his life". Britten died in 1976 after an unsuccessful heart operation.
