Brittens Owen Wingrave

International Brucknerfest Linz 2025. Television opera in the television studio. In cooperation with ORF, the Brucknerhaus Linz is showing Benjamin Britten's "television opera" Owen Wingrave in a new film version from 2001.

When Benjamin Britten received the commission for an opera in 1969, he was already regarded as the most famous opera composer of his time with works such as Peter Grimes, Billy Budd or The Turn of the Screw of his time. With his new stage work, he nevertheless ventured into unknown territory once again at the age of 56, as the premiere of his opera Owen Wingrave about a young man who tries to escape the conservative militaristic traditions of his family did not take place on a theatre stage on 16 May 1971, but in the living rooms of British audiences, where the BBC2 channel broadcast the film version, which was produced at enormous expense.

The Brucknerhaus Linz is showing the remake, praised by the Sunday Times as "one of the best opera films ever", with an outstanding cast including baritone Gerald Finley and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Kent Nagano in the Audience Studio of the ORF Regional Studio Upper Austria.