Representations and intersections of queerness and disability in the stage works of Benjamin Britten

Cane, David (2022) Representations and intersections of queerness and disability in the stage works of Benjamin Britten. Doctoral thesis (PhD), The Royal Northern College of Music in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

My work throughout this thesis aligns itself with an emerging interdisciplinary subfield: music and disability studies. Championing disability as a category of cultural analysis (alongside those more routinely instanced of race, gender, and class), this thesis highlights how critical disability theory can usefully be incorporated into a musicological setting. I explore the portrayal and deployment of disability and queerness throughout the stage works of Benjamin Britten. I am particularly interested in the ways in which disability is a present but often unspoken and unacknowledged aspect of the discourse surrounding Benjamin Britten and his stage works. Moreover, with reference to crip theory, I argue that disability and queerness are interconnected in especially rich ways throughout Britten’s stage works. Although I attend to ways in which disability is a pervasive feature in many of Britten’s stage works, the centrepiece of my work is my analysis of Britten’s opera Peter Grimes. I explore how (cognitive) disability functions both as an element of plot and characterisation but also as a formal, structuring aspect of Britten’s work, ultimately confounding the distinction between form and content.