Opera review: Deborah Warner’s production of Death in Venice is everything that a production should be, Lohengrin

Thomas Mann, Gustav von Aschenbach, Benjamin Britten, united in a common interest, one the expression of which is still taboo, yet which Mann succeeded in writing a bestseller about, and Britten his last testament. Mann surmounted the interest, just, by fantasising and remaining amazed that people actually ‘do it’, if his reaction to Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar is anything to go by.

Aschenbach is so enthralled that he dies rather than separating from his pubescent beloved, and never has the courage to speak to him. About Britten things are still a bit unclear, and are likely to remain so. What astonishes is that Mann’s story has been an accepted masterpiece since it was published — even the Nazis didn’t round on it, though they proscribed him in general. Yet if Aschenbach had elicited any glimmer of response from Tadzio, even a rapid embrace, he would be regarded as one of the most appalling villains in literature, and Death in Venice would be an expensive rarity on AbeBooks.