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''Nelson'' is an opera in 3 acts by Lennox Berkeley to a libretto by Alan Pryce-Jones. The opera centres on the love affair of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson and Emma, Lady Hamilton. Completed in 1951, it was first performed in full in 1954. ==Background== Berkeley began work on ''Nelson'' in 1949. In 1950 he was invited by Rear-Admiral Charles Lambe to be a guest of the Royal Navy Home Fleet on its spring cruise through the waters where the Battle of Trafalgar, (Nelson's final battle) had been fought. Berkeley was provided with two grand pianos in his cabin (enabling the composer and Lambe, who was an accomplished pianist, to play duets), and the fleet slowed down between Cape St. Vincent and Cape Trafalgar to enable the composer to drink in the scene of Nelson's final moments.〔(Brttien-Pears Foundation ) website〕 The opera had a partial performance, to piano accompaniment, at the Wigmore Hall in London in 1953, when the part of Nelson was sung by Peter Pears. Critics received this well, but the reviews of the full version a year later, staged at Sadler's Wells Theatre with the encouragement of Benjamin Britten, were mixed. This may have been because Britten's own ''The Turn of the Screw'' also premiered around the same time, inevitably invoking comparisons. It may also have affected critics that earlier in 1954, Berkeley's second, and very different, opera, the surrealistic comedy ''A Dinner Engagement'', had been premiered; this successful one-act work remains the only one of Berkeley's operas to have held the stage. ''Nelson'' had only nine performances in the 1954/5 season. In 1965 the composer wrote 'I should now want to rewrite so much of it if it were to be revived. I do think it has good things in it, but I'm not satisfied with it as a whole.' Nevertheless, a concert performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1988 evoked more positive critical consensus.〔Dickinson (2003), p. 130, 140〕 The work is in the tradition of heroic opera, with typical features such as love duets, a letter scene, and large-scale finales to some of the scenes. Berkeley's style, reflecting his studies with Nadia Boulanger, also enables him to deal effectively with lighter moments of satire and comment. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nelson (opera)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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