BRITTEN: Let's Make an Opera (Feature Film, 1996) (NTSC)

• Throughout his compositional work, Benjamin Britten did much to support young people with their musical education – one has only to think for example of works such as The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.
  


• His ‘Entertainment for Young People’ written in 1949 and entitled Let’s Make an Opera, Op. 45, is another example of this didactic approach to composition, although the work is also a morality tale that condemns the abuse of children, particularly those suffering social deprivation – represented in this instance by Sam, an apprentice chimneysweep. Britten himself developed a great personal attachment to the work. In his own words, he associated its composition with "an indescribable feeling of happiness."
  


• Let’s Make an Opera is divided into three parts. Act Three, which is an independent entity and suitable for performance on its own, narrates the actual tale of The Little Sweep. In this film, the director Petr Weigl has reworked and enriched the two-part prologue to the story through the introduction of additional characters.