Berkeley began work on
Nelson in 1949. In 1950 he was invited by Rear-Admiral
Charles Lambe to be a guest of the
Royal Navy Home Fleet on its spring cruise through the waters where the
Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson's final battle, had been fought. Berkeley was provided with two grand pianos in his cabin (enabling the composer and Lambe, who was an accomplished pianist, to play duets), and the fleet slowed down between
Cape St. Vincent and
Cape Trafalgar to enable the composer to drink in the scene of Nelson's final moments. The opera had a partial performance, to
piano accompaniment, at the
Wigmore Hall in London in 1953, when the part of Nelson was sung by
Peter Pears. Critics received this well, but the reviews of the full version a year later, staged at
Sadler's Wells Theatre with the encouragement of
Benjamin Britten, were mixed. This may have been because Britten's own
The Turn of the Screw also premiered around the same time, inevitably invoking comparisons. It may also have affected critics that earlier in 1954, Berkeley's second, and very different, opera, the
surrealistic comedy
A Dinner Engagement, had been premiered; this successful one-act work remains the only one of Berkeley's operas to have held the stage.
Nelson had only nine performances in the 1954/5 season. In 1965 the composer wrote 'I should now want to rewrite so much of it if it were to be revived. I do think it has good things in it, but I'm not satisfied with it as a whole.' Nevertheless, a concert performance at the
Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1988 evoked more positive critical consensus. The work is in the tradition of heroic opera, with typical features such as love duets, a letter scene, and large-scale finales to some of the scenes. Berkeley's style, reflecting his studies with
Nadia Boulanger, also enables him to deal effectively with lighter moments of satire and comment. ==Roles==