Beatrice Cenci
Music by Berthold Goldschmidt · libretto by Martin Esslin · premiered 1988
Beatrice Cenci is an opera in three acts by German composer Berthold Goldschmidt based on the Shelley play The Cenci. Composed in 1949 to an English libretto by Martin Esslin. Goldschmidt’s second opera was one of four prize-winning works in the British Arts Council’s ‘Festival of Britain’ competition in 1949, but it never received the promised performance in the 1951 Festival. Its concert premiere was in Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in 1988, and its staged premiere in Magdeburg in 1994.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Beatrice Cenci (opera)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Berthold Goldschmidt (18 January 1903 – 17 October 1996) was a German Jewish composer who spent most of his life in England. The suppression of his work by Nazi Germany, as well as the disdain with which many modernist critics elsewhere dismissed his "anachronistic" lyricism, stranded the composer in the wilderness for many years before he was given a revival in his final decade.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Berthold Goldschmidt", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Other Operas by Berthold Goldschmidt
- Der gewaltige Hahnrei (1932)