I think I prefer Steuart Bedford's recording, which has a really fine cast including my friend Stuart Kale.
Then, for Queen Elizabeth's coronation, we get Billy Budd. It was not a success, Britten later revised it, and it took off. These days, because of the homoerotic subtext and the continual references to Billy's beauty, it's become the opera for handsome buff baritones to show off their buff bodies. I think Britten's recording of the revised version still takes the cake.
Next was The Turn of the Screw, and you already like that, so we'll pass on to my last two favorite operas. The first is a children's opera, Noye's Fludde, to be performed in a church, with a cast of three professional singers, and a ton of children, playing Noah's sons, daughters-in-law, Mrs Noah's gossipy friends, and every animal in the world. The tunes, whether Britten's or the three standard hymns, just keep coming, and it never outstays its welcome.
The last is his Shakespeare opera, A Midsummer Night's Dream, with three different sonic environments, one for the lovers and mortals, one for the Mechanicals, and one for the fairies. Moth, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, and the other fairies are children, Puck is an acrobat who speaks, Titania is a coloratura soprano, and Oberon is a countertenor, and they dominate the score with truly beautiful music, and the concluding "Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe," performed by the Mechanicals, is Britten's funniest music since Albert Herring.
