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The Great British Art Tour: Britten, Pears and a missing arm

With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring highlights from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Aldeburgh’s Double Concerto

For more than 35 years the composer Benjamin Britten and singer Peter Pears lived together as life partners, their work together as musicians underpinned by a deep and fixed relationship that the two men described as a marriage. Although it was an open secret, for much of their lives that relationship was illegal and a plausible deniability had to be maintained at all times.

For nearly 20 years the two men made their home together in The Red House in Aldeburgh, and in the hall is a painting that tells a vivid story about their lives as gay men at this time. Double Concerto was commissioned by the two in 1967, very shortly after the Sexual Offences Act made their relationship legal at last.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3sraZnL
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