Ben and Imo

You’ll be remembered forever. I’ll be forgot. As it should be.
But Gloriana wouldn’t have been the same If I wasn’t here.

The 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II is fast approaching. To mark the occasion, Benjamin Britten has just nine months to write a new opera about her predecessor Elizabeth I.

Into the world of the disheartened composter enters the exuberant and passionate Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav and an accomplished musician in her own right. Her candid and can-do attitude proves to be the perfect foil for the weary Britten, and what begins as an arrangement of practical support turns into a bond that not only sees Gloriana to its première but endures throughout the rest of their lives.

Mark Ravenhill (The Boy in The Dress, Candide) first created Ben and Imo as a radio play, and now adapts it for the stage directed by Erica Whyman (Hamnet, Romeo and Juliet 2018, Miss Littlewood, The Seven Acts of Mercy, A Museum in Baghdad).