The English Opera Group was a small company of British musicians formed in 1947 by the composer Benjamin Britten (along with John Piper, Eric Crozier and Anne Wood) for the purpose of presenting his and other, primarily British, composers' operatic works.
The group later expanded to present larger-scale works, and was renamed the English Music Theatre Company.
Despite heavy subsidies, however, the costs of touring could not be recouped, so Britten and the group's other directors decided that it should be based at a home venue.
[4] It gave the North American première of Britten's The Turn of the Screw at Canada's Stratford Festival in 1957.
It also gave the British première of Francis Poulenc's opera Les mamelles de Tirésias in 1958.