No, I Didn't Know About This Documentary

UNKNOWN TO ME when I wrote that post about Benjamin Britten's disturbing relationships with young teenage boys,  it was more than two of the boys in question who had talked about their relationship with Benjamin Britten.  This documentary,  "Britten's Children" revealed things which seem disturbingly suggestive of pedophile abuse today but which, apparently, they didn't see that way as of 2004 when the documentary was made and the interviews with a number of the, then, adult boys were conducted.   None of them accused Britten of having sex with them, none of them accused him of molesting them,  one of them notes that back when he had an intense relationship with Britten, what looks suspicious to us now wasn't nearly as suggestive of pedophile abuse.   By the time the documentary was made and considering the frankness with which these now adults discuss their relationship,  it's doubtful that all of them would have been reluctant to reveal if more had happened than they talk about.  If there were others,  there doesn't seem to be any evidence I've found.  

The intensity of the relationship leaves me extremely uneasy but I have to conclude that unless there are actual accusations of rape or molestation,  the evidence is that things never went that far.   I don't think what they describe, in the absence of an actual sexual relationship,  can fairly stand as an attempted seduction.  One thing I think is pretty clear is that Benjamin Britten stayed shockingly immature in such matters.  I think maybe in his late operas, starting with the surprisingly experimental late opera Cerlew River,  Britten was trying to come to terms with some of those feelings.  But, whatever the evidence is,   I doubt that I'd have ever felt comfortable if an adult male had acted like Britten did when I was a teenager and I was certainly attracted to some adult men.  It's common for teenagers to feel sexually attracted to adults.   There should be a rule that no adult should act like that with a child, even if because you have no way to know how the child would see it and it is, at the very least, unfair to them.  

One thing I did find really disturbing is how Britten, who was notorious for suddenly and definitively ending relationships with adults with whom he had been very close to, did the same with some of the boys he'd had as close relationships with,  David Hemming talking about how, when his voice suddenly broke in the middle of a performance of The Turn of the Screw and that was the end of his relationship with Britten, an experience echoed in one or more of the interviews is pretty shocking.   That he would treat children the same ruthless way he treated adults - sometimes with provocation (as with Charles Mackerras) sometimes for no reason admitted - doesn't do much for my opinion of him as a man.   Some of the really great composers were less than admirable as human beings.  And I do think that Britten was a remarkable composer, certainly the best opera composer since Verdi and one of the great composers of settings of the English language.  Like my feelings for Mahler, I like his vocal music a lot more than his instrumental music. 

I'm left where I was Saturday afternoon when I wrote that I don't know what to make of it, especially in relation to Britten's music, especially Death in Venice.   If you want to come to a conclusion on this issue, you should listen to what these witnesses have to say.