6 Death in Venice and the Aesthetics of

Sublimation
Christopher Chowrimootoo

154
Fig. 14. Death in Venice (Act I, Scene 1)—Aschenbach (Peter
Pears), Snape Maltings, Suffolk, June 1973. Photo: Nigel Luckhurst.
Image reproduced courtesy of the Britten-Pears Foundation.

In casting the Polish family as mute dancers, the creators added another level of
separation to this “complex and many-layered composition.”39 For Ned Rorem,
writing for The New Republic, this dramaturgical decision was the only responsible
reading of the novella’s symbolism: “If the Silent Ideal must be depicted within a
medium whose very purpose is noise, then mime, while a bit illegal, is probably
the only solution.”40
According to Greenfield, an even more forceful way of encouraging abstract
readings was through dramatic minimalism—a dearth of action—to parallel the
abstemiousness of the staging. In banishing the kind of narrative events associated
with traditional drama, the creators forced audiences to dig for “deeper” symbolic
levels. As Kenneth Loveland explained:
Even in the most dramatic operas, such as Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, Britten is concerned with mental plight,
and no matter how widespread the background, the focal