The patronage bestowed by British royalty on the arts in the twentieth century has been very little explored. This chapter looks at the most prominent examples of how the monarch, and senior members of the royal family, supported individual writers, artists, musicians, and performers up to the 1970s. A mere royal command or even just interest in a certain work can greatly increase the attention it receives and further its creator’s reputation and success. All the same, royal patronage in this period became a more formalised enterprise. In contrast to previous centuries, royal patronage concentrated more and more on professional organisations and distinct groups, rather than on selected individuals.

From mid-1943 until late-1950, Eric Crozier was an essential asset to Britten’s industry. His work alongside director and radio producer Tyrone Guthrie not only introduced Crozier to the Old Vic in London, but to the BBC as well, where Guthrie also worked. Joan Cross invited Crozier and Guthrie to each direct two different productions at Sadler’s Wells in 1943. Crozier directed and produced Britten’s first two operas, Peter Grimes in 1945 at Sadler’s Wells, and The Rape of Lucretia in 1946 for the short-lived Glyndebourne English Opera Company. Crozier wrote the librettos for Albert Herring and the children’s entertainment Let’s Make an Opera (with its central opera, The Little Sweep), in addition to writing the text for the cantata Saint Nicolas, and with E. M. Forster, he was co-librettist for Billy Budd. Britten, Crozier, and designer John Piper founded the English Opera Group. The endeavour was based on ‘the Britten–Crozier doctrine’ that sought the group’s own autonomy and ultimately a home to produce such works. That home was largely realised in the founding of the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts in 1948, for which Crozier was a founder and co-artistic director.

Britten’s diaries and letters between the wars reveal a profound irritation with what he saw as the parochialism and amateurishness of British music making, especially in comparison with the standards he admired in Europe. So it is perhaps not surprising that the first singer with whom he worked closely was not British, but the Swiss-born Sophie Wyss. It is clear that by 1942, on his return from America, and with Peter Pears installed as his permanent partner, Britten’s expectations had developed radically. Unique to this volume and building on Roger Vignoles’s career as an internationally recognised collaborative pianist, this chapter continues with discussions of Joan Cross (after her departure from Sadler’s Wells Opera), as well as Jennifer Vyvyan, Arda Mandikian, Heather Harper, Alfred Deller, David Hemmings, Galina Vishnevskaya, Janet Baker, Kathleen Ferrier, Nancy Evans, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Owen Brannigan, Robert Tear, Theodore Uppman, and John Shirley-Quirk.