Benjamin Britten composed Gloriana, his coronation opera honoring Queen Elizabeth II, in 1953, and drew from it the Symphonic Suite, Op. 53a, as a concert work for orchestra with optional tenor solo. The opera itself premiered at the Royal Opera House on 8 June 1953, and the suite followed the next year, first performed in 1954 by tenor Peter Pears with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Scored for full orchestra, the suite opens with the opera's celebrated Courtly Dances and closes with the music of its Epilogue, offering a vivid and effective distillation of the opera's most striking orchestral moments.

The suite's second movement features a setting of a lute song with words by Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, scored for solo tenor; this vocal line can equally be played by a solo oboe from within the orchestra, giving performers real flexibility in programming the work with or without a singer. This flexibility, combined with the suite's broad expressive range, from courtly dance rhythms to more intimate lyrical writing, makes it an unusually adaptable concert piece, equally at home opening or closing a program.

Though Gloriana itself remained underappreciated for decades after its premiere, the Symphonic Suite has proven to be one of the most rewarding ways to introduce audiences to this neglected stage work, offering colorful orchestration and memorable melodic material in a compact concert format. This score and set of parts gives orchestras a striking and flexible showpiece, drawn from one of Britten's most historically significant theatrical works, ready to bring fresh color and drama to any concert program.