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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 172 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 172, February 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Gloriana
Dir: Benjamin Britten
Gloriana was first performed as part of the celebrations of the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, and was met with indifference and hostility. Forty years on, Opera North’s production is being met with well deserved acclaim. This does not mean Britten’s music has suddenly become more popular, but that his opera depicts a society in flux, which relates more closely to the Britain of 1994 than it did to the Britain of 1953.
The opera charts the personal and political relationships between Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex in the years after the defeat of the Armada in 1588. Essex tries to make his name by quelling a rebellion in Ulster. He fails utterly and, his ambition thwarted, attempts rebellion on his own account. He is executed for treason. Throughout, there is a scarcely concealed passion between Elizabeth and Essex.
Elizabeth’s anguish at having to sign her lover’s death warrant underlines the conflicts tearing her society apart. Her relationship with Essex is itself part of the struggle of contending classes, old and new, for influence and power. These tensions and conflicts which had been kept in check for years by Elizabeth’s power were to explode into civil war, revolution and the triumph of a new ruling class within 50 years of Elizabeth’s death.
Such images of conflict and decay did not fit while Britain’s postwar boom was still largely intact. Elizabeth even seems at war with herself, embodying reaction one moment and progress the next: she is not an independent actor on her own stage, but is subject to the same contradictory forces as the rest of society.
All the while, others are waiting for Elizabeth’s end. King James of Scotland hovers in the wing denying, Kenneth Clarke like, that he is impatient to occupy the throne.
Offstage we can hear a chorus professing loyalty to the queen, but reminding us of the far larger numbers who will shortly take centre stage of English history in order to make a revolution.
Yet Gloriana is not some right-on political allegory linking 1600 with 1994. The principal characters have genuine depth, and magnificent performances ensure it is difficult not to sympathise with them: even with Elizabeth who, as she declines personally and politically, is forced to kill her lover and sees her world crumbling around her.
Gloriana is touring to London, Nottingham, Manchester, Norwich and Hull during February and March
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