Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River was first seen in the 1964 Aldeburgh festival and, to mark the passage of 60 years, the current festival presented a new staging by Deborah Warner, complemented with an authentic performance of the Japanese Noh play, Sumidagawa, the original inspiration for what Britten called a church parable. Connecting the two made for a tour de force.
In Kanze Motomasa’s drama dating from the early 15th century, a noblewoman driven mad by the abduction of her 12-year-old son, takes the ferry across the Sumida River – the river flowing through present-day Toyko – to search for the boy, only to learn of his death and burial at a place where strangers have built a memorial in his honour.
