Brilliant and provocative composer Baron Benjamin Britten and his life-long partner, tenor Sir Peter Pears, lived through pretty much every major event of the 20th century as vibrant, talented, and successful gay men.
The two met in their twenties in 1934 but did not become close friends until a friend of Pears died in an airplane crash. The duo gave their first concert together in 1937 and became one another’s colleagues, mutual inspirations, and lifelong lovers. Britten turned down the knighthood, but later accepted a life peerage as Baron Britten. The two lovers are buried side by side at St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church.
Britten, whose reputation as a World War II pacifist, rumored obsession with young males (including David Hemmings) and curious sources of operatic and choral material (the poems of an institutionalized religious fanatic, The Turn of the Screw, and others) once obscured his reputation as a composer and musician, is now considered to be one of the great 20th-century composers, and one whose talent and life were enmeshed with his sexuality and his life partner.
Britten is also known for his strong religious beliefs and moral code, which is an element rarely explored in stories of openly gay men. Pears once noted, “I think the key to his music lies in his moral point of view combined with his craving for lost innocence brought on by his increasing disillusionment with man.”
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