Benjamin Britten died at 63 without knowing he had tertiary syphilis, which led to the heart failure that eventually killed him, according to a biography of the composer, whose centenary is being celebrated this year.
Paul Kildea, a conductor and music historian, believes Britten almost certainly infected by his partner of many decades, the tenor Peter Pears, but never knew he had the disease, which was beyond treatment by the time surgeons discovered it. He never fully recovered from an operation on his heart in 1973 and died in 1976.
Kildea believes Pears also never learned the truth, and was a carrier without symptoms of syphilis. It is thought the couple were not informed because of the social taboo regarding the disease at the time.
Pears died in 1986, at 76, and was buried next to his partner at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, near their home that is now the headquarters of the Britten Pears Foundation and the centre of the centenary celebrations.
Britten died without knowing why he failed to recover from surgery for aortic incompetence – a condition in which the heart is progressively damaged by blood leaking through the aortic valve.
"It was a series of tragedies, really," Kildea told the Guardian. "Syphilis did not kill him, but it meant that his heart was not in the condition required to recover completely from the procedure he underwent and from which his consultant [though not his cardiologist] expected him to make a full recovery."
Colin Matthews, a former assistant to the composer and on the board of the Britten Pears Foundation, only recently learned the full story, in advance of the publication of the biography by Kildea.
"It's beyond proof one way or the other, since almost all those involved are either beyond speech or unwilling to speak, but for what it's worth I think it is probably true. No one would have thought to call for a postmortem when he died. His heart was known to be failing and he died of heart failure, so that was that.
"I'm not surprised that the decision was taken at the time that it was better just not to tell anyone. Nothing could have been done, and it would have caused great distress. In those days people would undoubtedly have been shocked, and I think to people of a certain generation it may still seem so today, as syphilis carried a real stigma. But among most people I have spoken to in the last few days the reaction has been, 'so what?'."
In his biography, serialised in the Telegraph in advance of publication, Kildea writes that as Britten exhausted himself on research for Death In Venice in 1971, he said to his assistant: "First of all I've got to finish this one, then there's a big work, then an opera, and then I'll be ill."
His tiredness and breathlessness were treated with drugs, Pears complained: "Ben is writing an evil opera, and it's killing him."
Britten finally had surgery, performed a team led by the South African Donald Ross, in May 1973.
