A British Pathé newsreel story about the 1953 Covent Garden premiere of Benjamin Britten’s opera Gloriana, commissioned as part of the celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The premiere was a now-legendary disaster, largely because the opening-night audience consisted mainly of upper-class luminaries hostile to modern music, and the opera (which is only mentioned in passing in the clip) failed to establish itself in the repertory until more than a decade later:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)