Glyndebourne Billy Budd revisited

Britten's Billy Budd is being revived at Glyndebourne. Eveyone loves this production, directed by Michael Grandage, because it's so straightforward. Assuming, of course, that Billy Budd is a straightforward sea shanty about life on the ocean wave. Perhaps productions like these are popular because they castrate the opera and minimize its more disturbing meanings. Like Tim Albery's 1988 production with Thomas Allen, Grandage's Billy Budd could have been made for pre-watershed TV costume drama, where brutality, sodomy and moral contradictions have no place.  It's very dark and claustrophobic, which is true to the opera, but the emphasis is on Billy, not on Captain Vere, whose dilemmas should really be central.

Glyndebourne's Billy Budd will be immortal, however, for Jacques Imbrailo. He is so exceptionally perfect in the role that he outshines everything else. His portrayal is so charismatic that he shifts the whole balance of the opera from Vere to Billy. Imbrailo glows, as if lit by inner light. He's like a beacon in that fetid, prison-like underworld below decks.  Sometimes the role has been played as if it's a cipher, for no-one really knows where Billy is "coming from". Captain Vere has spent decades trying to figure him out, without success. Imbrailo, however, inhabits the part so fully that he turns the opera on its head. Imbrailo's Billy exudes genuine goodness and purity, borne of deeeply intuitive conviction. “Through the port comes moonshine astray” isn’t the usual lyrical magic but a kind of spiritual apotheosis. “I’m strong, and I know it, and I’ll stay strong!” Imbrailo’s “Beauty” isn’t a passive “Baby” but an assertive force of life.

Imbrailo's Billy is also deeply sympathetic. Imbrailo understands the psychological importance of Billy's stutter. Vere is intellectual. Billy, on the other hand, is instinctive, physical, direct. Imbrailo lives the part in his body. No makeup can turn his face red so quickly, no costume can create the tense, twisted coil of his frame. Imbrailo’s Billy is musically astute, as stammer is integral to Britten’s music. The mutiny, in Billy Budd, is in the music. So echoes of Billy’s stammer burst out in recurrent staccato in the orchestra, disruptive protests against the rigidity of naval life. The sailors don’t mutiny, but Billy’s stammer comes to affect the rhythms in other voices, even Claggart’s. Like Billy, Britten expresses himself in abstract sound, rather than relying on words alone. Orchestration as protagonist. In Billy Budd, Britten shows why he didn’t need to write symphonies.

Claire Seymour, author of The Operas of Benjamin Britten, will be reviewing it in Opera Today.  I was at the premiere in 2010, which is also available on DVD and will be broadcast this year in cinemas and online. 

Read the full review from 2010 HERE. 

ENO Britten Billy Budd review

The ENO has a hit on its hands with its new production of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd, now on at the Coliseum, London. Visually it's striking. Like the seamen, we're trapped in the claustrophic hold of the warship, "lost in the infinite sea". David Alden is sharp enough to know that Billy Budd isn't colourful costume drama.

Yet the moral dilemma Captain Vere faces in 1797 isn't black and white. It's so complex that he spends the rest of his life agonizing about what he might have done. Only when he understands what Billy means can he find deliverance. The Indomitable goes into battle stations but is defeated, not by the French but by nature itself and its envoloping mists. Indeed, against the wild forces of nature, the 'Indomitable' isn’t indomitable; it’s vulnerable, and can be destroyed by fate as capriciously as Billy himself is destroyed.What is the mystery at the heart of this deliberately opaque, emotionally reticent drama?

Why does Britten write music that churns and changes like the ocean itself?  Through the orchestra, the ocean takes centre stage, turbulent and intense. Huge crescendos build up like mighty waves, but even more impressive is the undertow of dark, murmuring sound that surges ever forwards. Above this, currents flowed diagonally across the orchestra, first violins flowing to brass and basses and back, just as ships lurch back and forth. You could get seasick if you focussed too hard, but that is the point, for Britten is showing that the “floating world” aboard ship is unsteady, far removed from the certainties of dry land. Just like the enveloping mists, all points of moral reference are hidden. The stark  monochrome of this set (designer Paul Steinberg)  is excellent, but it isn't enough on its own. 


Billy Budd is metaphysical. There are numerous levels of meaning. Captain Vere is stymied because he can't interpret meaning. So it's up to a director to have vision, and to inspire the singers to express the complex nuances so fundamental to this drama. All this cast is experienced, and capable of responding to a much more intense approach. Kim Begley is a superlative character singer.  But he isn't called upon here to bring out the full character of Captain Vere. He's dressed in a white suit, like God, but Britten's written huge contradictions into the part. Vere is as vulnerable as his ship itself. He's a brave man but crippled by uncertainity and guilt. If he was godlike and confident he wouldn't be tortured by self doubt. Begley is luxury casting, but isn't asked to develop the more anguished side of Vere's personality. 

Unlike Captain Vere, Billy Budd seems a straightforward character who doesn't question anything. Yet why is he so compelling that the crew adore him? Why is Vere fixated? Why is Claggart so discomforted by his presence?  This is a frighteningly difficult role because whoever sings it must convey things which Billy cannot say. It needs exceptional acting skill. Benedict Nelson sang Demetrius in the ENO Midsummer Nights Dream (see review here) but a role like that is no preparation for Billy Budd.  Nelson tackles Through the port comes moonshine astray carefully, but doesn't convey the extremely subtle way Britten writes contradiction into the aria. This is Billy's battle, but like Vere, he knows he can't win it when fate is against him. Billy loves life too much to lose it , but he sees goodness in small things, like the piece of hard biscuit Dansker brings him. Perhaps the secret lies in the personality of the singer, which is why Jacques Imbrailo seemed to radiate a truly transcendant goodness when he sang Billy Budd at Glyndebourne. Nothing can prepare a singer for a performance like that, and no-one should be expected to compare.

Matthew Rose sang a solid Claggart. He certainly looks the part, especially with pallid makeup, and has the ability to imbue the part with unhealthy menace. But here he's not called on to express the unclean sexual aspect of the role. Yet if he did, it might distort the production. The whole naval system is corrupt, based on brutality and abuse. Even Vere and Billy are complicit because they're part of it.  I cringe whenever I hear the Novice sing about having been "clever" until he was press ganged, because it shows how the system brutalizes decent people. Nicky Spence managed to make his Novice a strong portrayal, and deserved the applause that greeted him at curtain call. 

Great cameos by Duncan Rock (Donald), Gwynne Howell (Dansker)  and the chorus, here well directed and blocked.  Unfortunately, the long horizontals on stage mean that much of the singing projects into the wings, its impact lost. Britten writes great variety into this music, but the quirkiness is underplayed. When Mr Redburn and Lieutenant Ratcliffe talk about the French, the exchange can be both comic and disturbing, for it shows how stupid those in authority can be. Here, however, the sharpness is muted,  Jonathan Summers and Henry Waddington singing correctly, but without the savage satire Britten's trying to point out.  

The navy is institutionalized, and David Alden emphasizes the conformist monotony of life aboard ship. It's valid, and might have made Vere's questioning all the more distressing had the idea been followed through. Given the genteel politeness of David Alden's concept, it would not have been appropriate for Edward Gardner to have conducted with more lethal passion. This is a good production for anyone new to Britten and to Biilly Budd because Paul Steinberg's set focuses on the essentials. But ultimately, it holds fire and doesn't engage with the darkest aspects of the opera any more than the Indomitable engages with the French.  Billy Budd is a very dark and complex opera. It might be possible to direct a production where the true horror is exposed but it would make audiences as anguished as Captain Vere. That's simply not viable. 

Please see my other pieces on Benjamin Britten, especially The Prince of the Pagodas, currently at the Royal Opera House. 

photos copyright Henrietta Butler, courtesy ENO

Billy Budd, Amsterdam

Jacques Imbrailo and John Mark Ainsley together again in Britten Billy Budd, this time in Amsterdam. Obviously, can't tell production from a few shots, but it looks interesting. More emphasis on the "inner" story as told through the music, than the "outer" story? Britten was interested in Captain Vere's moral dilemma, and the image of goodness and freedom Billy represents. Much more to this opera than shipboard romance.

Opera - Best of 2010

Lists bother me.  How do you compare a fish to a pinecone? But looking back at 2010 opera is a good exercise because it makes you think "why" things appeal or don't.

At the top, several Royal Opera House productions proving that it's one of the greatest houses of all, however how some enjoy picking nits. Where would we be otherwise? How we've been enriched by Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur! What an experience, visually, musically, intellectually! This was a production where everything pulled together - stars, comprimario, designs, orchestra, conceptual ideas. Brilliant and not just because it looked good. This production had brains behind it (please see several different posts).

Next Niobe, Regina di Tebe. This generated extreme responses, understandably so, as it was baroque, unknown and given completely innovative treatment. Baroque audiences wanted spectacle, excitement, extravagance and wit. That's why Niobe was a hit with specialist European audiences. Too bad if some London audiences didn't get it. Perhaps too many staid Handel performances blunt the appetite. (And Handel can be wild!)  Artistically, this was a daringly brave.choice. Several different posts on Niobe on this blog, please search.

Tannhäuser would be top of my list for sure except for niggling doubts. Audio-only it's mindbendingly beautiful but therein lies the dilemma.  What does the opera really mean? Why are the Wartburgers and even the Pope so paranoid? It's much more than an opera about art, even though the main man's the one with the lute. It's a morality tale with a twist. As Tannhäuser says, the Wartburgers don't know what real emotion is. It follows that, no matter how beautiful art might be, it's superficial without intense, and dangerous emotional engagement. There's plenty on Tannhäuser and on Wagner on this site, so please take the time to read and think about it. Fascinating. I'm growing to love this performance (as heard on broadcast) passionately but still not completely convinced it's been thought through. Not even by Wagner himself, perhaps.But interpretation is important, because it's has a bearing on evaluating performance.

So what is the thread that runs through how and why I respond to things. For me I think it's repertoire first, understanding the work in question, its composer and its meaning.  Even completely new things like George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill which grows in stature the more it's heard.  With vocal music, there almost inevitably has to be meaning of some kind of other, conscious or otherwise. Indeed, the greater the work, there more complex the interpretation. Usually, though not inevitably.

That's why I enjoyed the Glyndebourne Don Giovanni better than the Glyndebourne Billy Budd.  That Billy Budd managed to avoid morality altogether and present the opera as a sailor love triangle. If it hadn't been for Jacques Imbrailo's outstanding performance,  the production would have been ideas-free altogether. In this opera, Britten comes close to revealing his inner conflicts. But perhaps audiences want comfort zone affirmation, not ideas. Anyway, I'll be writing more later about the filmed version of Don Giovanni that's still available on BBCTV2 on demand.  The film is so different from the actual live experience it needs a special post.

ENO's Makropulos Case would have been top of my list too if it had been in Czech.  No way will the best European singers relearn their parts in a language foreign to them and to the music. Of course the ENO helped put Janáček on the anglophone map but it's still a compromise.  ENO's Bizet Pearl Fishers would have been a greater success if all the singers had been on the level of those in the ROH concert Les Pêcheurs de Perles. Some languages translate better. Oddly enough, the more I think about ENO's Idomeneo, the more it makes sense to me. Revivable, with adjustments.

Two Rossini Armidas and one Handel Alcina this year (same theme, different angle). I walked out of the Met Armida in disgust. Massive budget, but so self-congratulatory (I could use another word) that  it was artistic constipation. In complete contrast Garsington Opera's Armida was utterly brilliant.  Garsington makes a speciality of obscure Rossini operas, so the production came from a genuine understanding of the music and meaning. The Met has money, but Garsington has taste.

Normally I don't like celebrity chasing because it's not good for art or for the kind of performers who take it too seriously. But some singers rise way above that level and have integrity. That's why I shall never forget Plácido Domingo's Simon Boccanegra.  Such artistry, such committment, such engagement. Who cares if the fit's not perfect? There are things in art that transcend all pettiness.

Star born thru stutter - Glyndeboune Billy Budd - Imbrailo

Star born through stutter?  It's immediately obvious that Jacques Imbrailo's Billy Budd at Glyndebourne is extraordinary.  His stammer is more expressive than words could ever be.. The cannons don't get to shoot the Frenchies, Vere cannot resolve his conflicts,  but inarticulate Billy overcomes huge obstacles and gets things done. He pays the price for inadvertently killing Claggart, but no-one else stops Claggart's brutality (even if it's only til the next bully appears). Captain Vere's paralyzed by conscience, trapped in the fogs of scruple. Billy's instinctive, physical, direct. Imbrailo lives the part in his body. No makeup can turn his face bright red, no costume can create the tense, twisted coil of his frame.

Imbrailo's Billy is musically astute, as stammer is integral to Britten's music. The mutiny, in Billy Budd, is in the music. So echoes of Billy's stammer burst out in recurrent staccato in the orchestra, disruptive protests against the rigidity of naval life. The sailors don't mutiny, but Billy's stammer comes to affect the rhythms in other voices, even Claggart's. Like Billy, Britten expresses himself in abstract sound, rather than relying on words alone. Orchestration as protagonist. In Billy Budd, Britten shows why he didn't need to write symphonies. 

Significantly, in this new production directed by Michael  Grandage, what stands out most in Billy's star aria, "Through the port comes moonshine astray" isn't the usual lyrical magic but the phrase "I'm strong, and I know it, and I'll stay strong !"  Imbrailo's "Beauty" isn't a passive "Baby" but an assertive force of life.

Yet central to the whole opera is Captain Vere's dilemma. He's spent a lifetime trying to understand what Billy meant. What is  "the love that passes understanding"?  In this production, Vere  recedes almost into the background. This is certainly no "Starry Vere" with his head in the clouds, thinking about Scylla and Charbydis. He's not "Everyman". Instead, here he's "one of the boys", anonymous, Even among the officers he doesn't wear a hat.  In the scene where Billy is hanged, he's seen as an old man in a dressing gown, as still as a statue among the teeming crowd of sailors.  Grandage is making a valid point, but this neuters Vere's position. In this scene, Vere is still Captain, very much a part of proceedings, hamstrung as he is by his quandary. John Mark Ainsley sings beautifully, as he always does, but this production doesn't make full use of his potential.

If Vere's pivotal role is underplayed,  Claggart, in this production, is developed into a finely nuanced personality. Philip Ens makes Claggart twitch with sexual tension. Like the mists that trap the ship, and the haze that shrouds the stage, this Claggart oozes poison so pervasive that just hearing Ens makes one feel unclean- he's a great actor. How did this Claggart come to be who he is? This portrait of warped sexuality is almost too awful to contemplate. Britten wrote such venom into the part it's not surprising that people cope better with one dimensional Claggarts, but the loathing is there in the score. Whatever Britten may have done with boys, he wasn't a Claggart.

This is an extremely dark production, in all ways. Definitely not a cheery sailor story! Christopher Oram's set is claustrophobic. We're inside the bowels of the ship, not on deck, and certainly not up on the foretop.  You can almost smell the fetid air, and feel the cramped, damp chaos. Psychologically, this is astute, but becomes oppressive in itself.  "Farewell to the Rights of Man" might have sounded more poignant if we'd "seen" the bright hope of the other ship in some way. Later, soldiers in brilliant red and white uniforms appear. They're a delight to the eyes, but distract from the grimness of what's happening. The real brightness in this opera is Billy, and this transfiguration. The set is also not flexible, despite intelligent use of lighting (Paule Constable), and works less well after the First Act. Also, the protracted tying of the noose within sight of the
condemned man seemed excessive. The music at this point is so amazing, that we should be listening, not watching.

This was Mark Elder's first Billy Budd. He conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra so the strong undercurrents of Britten's music flowed well. In a production as dark as this, though, more sharpness of attack would have captured the edginess in the music, but Elder understood the recurrent "stammers" well. Dulled, pounding thrusts, as instinctive and direct as Billy's stutter.

"Rum, sodomy and the lash" don 't really fit in with Glyndebourne's elegant, summertime ambience, so it is no surprise that it's taken 60 years to become part of the Festival.  But it's a measure of Glyndebourne's artistic integrity that this particularly brutal production is done at all. This Billy Budd will be revived  many times. The theatre at Glyndebourne is small, but the Festival reaches out all over the world , to a much bigger audience through broadcasts and DVD releases.Hopefully, if they film this Billy Budd, they'll do it with Jacques Imbrailo, who is so good that his star is very definitely in the ascendant.

A more polished version of this will appear shortly - with photos! - in Opera Today. Please see my other pieces on Billy Budd and Benjamin Britten - lots! Use the search facility and labels on the right. And special thanks to the friend who took me and bought me dinner!!!!

Britten, Billy and Glyndebourne

Glyndebourne is staging its first Billy Budd, sixty years after it was written. Thereiin lies a story.  Here are two different articles on the background. More detailed, but an extremely good read: Richard Fairman in the Financial Times.  Shorter: The Guardian 

And then there's the wonderful quote Diane McVeagh found in Gerald Finzi's papers. "Britten is the Meyerbeer of our age", Finzi wrote, after the premiere of Billy Budd. He wasn't too comfortable with all those gay men.

(please see some of the things I've wriiten about Billy Budd HERE)
And also my reviwew of thew Glyndebourne production HERE

Peter Grimes ENO stagecraft (part 2)

"Too much sex and politics" is the usual rallying cry of those who don't like opera staging. But sometimes sex and politics are part of what the composer wanted.

There is sex in Peter Grimes, and politics too. The nieces sell their prettiness for money. And why are the townsfolk so down on Peter Grimes in an age when kids from the workhouse were treated as disposable commodities? The beauty of this new Alden production at the ENO is that he doesn't go for prurience. The nieces are little girls. However coy and culpable they may be they are too young to be predators. "Why should we be ashamed ? We comfort men from ugliness".

There's no escaping the fact that Benjamin Britten had a thing for pre-pubescent boys. David Hemmings and Scherchen junior were adamant that there was no sexual contact, and that Britten seemed more like a boy himself. Perhaps something happened to him when he was that age, fixing him forever in a fantasy world "before the fall"? It's a theme that recurs throughout his work. The apprentices become Tadzio. Is Britten grappling with his own sexuality? By modern standards, he'd probably be arrested even though, like the folks in the pub "we keep our hands to ourselves".

These days it's almost impossible to conceive of a time when homosexuality was illegal . In Britten's time even a whiff of scandal could scupper a man's career. Yet Britten never denied his orientation, which was in itself an act of courage. So Peter Grimes can be read fairly clearly as support for privacy and respect in a climate of malicious gossip. Maybe that's why Auntie looks butch ? After all, the neices are careful not to fool around til she's out of sight, another tiny detail that throws the usual assumption that the Boar is a brothel. In early 19th century Suffolk ? Perhaps implausible.

Britten was taken from his mother aged 13 and sent to boarding school where he was miserable. School was a posh kind of workhouse where boys were sent for their own good, possibly to be brutalized. Ellen and even Auntie are substitute mothers. What attracts Peter to Ellen is that she represents the nurturing he never had, even though he keeps his hut neat and orderly. Ellen's fallen middle class, so she can look pretty. Auntie's got up mannish, which doesn't necessarily mean she's a butch movie lesbian. She's a single woman running a business in a tough world.

Alden divides the men and the women of the parish when they march out of church. A barrier runs diagonally across the stage, men down one side, women down the other. Yet in real life it's not so clearcut. Auntie and Ellen do men's work, Peter would perhaps be less brutish if he knew how to. When the women talk about their lives, they form a knot, dragging Mrs Sedley in despite her resistance. She, too, was a woman once though she's shrivelled up now with meanness.

A very interesting detail is the way the nieces change after they're propositioned by Swallow. One of them wears a sailor suit, the other a kind of army drab. For the first time, they're different, playing at being adult. But the military is male dominated. What does it mean? The beauty of images liken this is that they are meant to stimulate thought, around and beyond what's immediately grasped. That's what good direction does.

Alden's crowd scenes are brilliantly choreographed. The townsfolk move in formation, like a single unit. Alden has them making hand gestures, upwards and down, so the effect is multi-dimensional, constantly in motion - like a shoal of fish. Because their costumes are drab, the whiteness of their hands and faces catches the light, like the glint of fish, writhing in a net. It's beautifully subtle, for throughout the text, there are references to "glitter", the "glitter of waves" and so on. This also underlines the musical phrases, short cascading flurries that sparkle against longer sonorities.

The excellent Opera North production centred round a net on stage, for good reason. Alden turns the crowd itself into a net, for in a way, they're all as trapped as Peter Grimes, though he's the one trying to break free.

Alden has the drummer centre stage, on his own, not part of the mob, which is often the case. This intensifies the impact of the drumming. There is no way of getting round the significance of Britten's position as a conscientious objector when the rest of the country was caught up in war frenzy. There's no war in this opera, unlike its companion piece Billy Budd. Rather Britten is dealing with the impulse that drives people towards warlike behaviour, whatever the actual cause.

When the Rector and the lawyer find Peter's hut empty, they're relieved. Yet even if there's no case, Mrs Sedley is out for blood. Peter must be punished, right or wrong. So the crowd sing "Who holds himself apart.... Him who despises us We’ll destroy" Peter must be destroyed not for what happens to his boys but because he's different, doesn't go to pubs, and thinks about rising above his station. The boys are just an excuse. "Dullards build their self esteem by inventing cruelties" sings one of the lawyers.

Hence the crowd as mindless shoal, or penned in at angles on the stage. They raise their prayer books , or lift their arms in diagonal salute. The references are subtle at first, but towards the culmination out come little Union Jack flags. This will incense a lot of people, but it's definitely in line with what Britten knew at first hand. Alden's not insulting the flag : it's the mob who insult it, by using it as a cover for their selfish cruelties. Ironically, it is fear that makes Peter drop the rope when he hears the mob approach. It's in the score.

One image I still don't understand is the fleeting glimpse of Peter, back from sea, observing the crowd unseen. He's wearing an animal head. Is this a reference to primitive sacrificial rites? Or to the idea that men are animals? Or even to Birtwistle's Minotaur, who looked like a monster but was the only untainted soul? Again, that's why intelligent stagecraft is so stimulating, it makes you think. Throughout Peter Grimes runs the idea of not making quick assumptions, so this is an opportunity to put the principle to practice.

The final scene is overwhelmingly beautiful and bleak at the same time. Sea merges with sky, the horizon very distant and obscure. That's exactly what the coast around the North Sea looks like. There are few cosy harbours. If Britten wanted Middle England he'd have lived in a suburb in the Home Counties. It's also apt as a metaphor, because it shows that rigid boundaries are not the only way, in nature as in morality. We don't need detail, for where Peter Grimes has gone is beyond our ken, where we can't possibly see. The set allows the music to take precedence. It wells up like a swell on the ocean :

In ceaseless motion comes and goes the tide
Flowing it fills the channel broad and wide
Then back to sea with strong majestic sweep
It rolls in ebb yet terrible and deep.

Peter Grimes & Billy Budd, soulmates? ENO

In Britain, we get plenty of Britten and to a high standard. Productions can't get away with being merely good, they have to be excellent. From all I've heard so far about the new Peter Grimes at ENO, it's superb. Alden places the action in the 1940's, no pretence that this is the 19th century, as is often the case. This is Britten, who knew things about prejudice the original poet George Crabbe either didn't know or couldn't express. There isn't a word for British McCarthyism, but the mentality did exist, and in many forms. HERE is Edward Seckerson in the Independent, in his usual perceptive , trenchant mode, pulling no punches :

".....Even Gerald Finley's Captain Balstrode has one arm – bitten off by a shark, perhaps, or one of the locals.....But the really scary thing about Alden's production is the way in which these assorted grotesques morph into a single entity – a brutal force moved about the stage like a shoal of carnivorous fish. The climactic manhunt is the alcohol-fuelled by-product of a party in which Alden lays on a hellish vision of middle-England. The Union Jacks come out, and so does the hatred of a united national front. And the ENO Chorus – sensational throughout – are now simply overwhelming."

Grimes and Billy Budd, soulmates ? I can't wait til Saturday. Since wroiting this I've been and seen. Look at what I've written about Alden's staging in the posts marked Peter Grimes ENO parts 1 and 2.LOTS on Britten on this blog. Scroll up or look at the labels on the right or look HERE

Britten and the FBI - love match ?

We now know that J Edgar Hoover, Head of the FBI, was politically regressive, deeply in the closet and vicious about it. He stood for everything Benjamin Britten opposed. Not a love match then. That Claggart business may have more meaning than we think.

Some years ago Donald Mitchell, the eminent Britten scholar, was doing some research under the Freedom of Information Act and came across a letter signed by Hoover himself in 1942 condemning Peter Pears, and another from 1967 condemning Britten. In both cases, the "evidence" is heavily blacked out. "A strange footnote", writes Mitchell, "a rare insight into a disreputable feature of 20th century politics in America and nearer home". It's cited in the Cambridge Companion to BB, ed Mervyn Cooke, where you can see photos of the original papers.

New BILLY BUDD Britten Harding LSO Bostridge Barbican

Brand new recording of Britten's Billy Budd. Daniel Harding conducts the LSO at the Barbican. This performance changed the whole way I listen to Billy Budd. Previously it wasn't a favourite as performances usually take the "talking heads" approach to the voices and action. But this performance is radically different. It makes a compelling case for Billy Budd as symphony, an orchestral work that uses voices to extend its impact, not "opera" in the usual sense of singers against a backdrop. Suddenly, Billy Budd is revealed as extremely sophisticated musical writing, where the real action is hidden in the orchestration, not what's happening with the actors. Captain Vere's dilemma "is" the central and absolute drama of the entire piece. "My life's broken. It's not his trial, it's mine, mine. It is I whom the Devil awaits". This opera isn't even about Billy, but about how people respond to difficult ethical situations.Billy Budd was written during the McCarthy era with its hysterical witch hunts. Britten was no fool.. It is significant how much he makes of the political paranoia of 1797, for it is pertinent to the "danger" the ship and its crew are in. Britten was emotionally reticent, knowing it could be dangerous to be too open, unsafe to be candid. So Billy stammers incoherently where he could save himself with clear explanations. Similarly, Captain Vere pulls back from the brink when he could have intervened. Billy Budd is an allegory where Britten expresses unfathomably deep emotions without revealing them except to those sensitive enough to listen.Harding’s emphasis on the orchestra is thus psychologically as well as musically astute. Here the ocean is a protagonist, every bit as much as the singing roles. Indeed, against the wild forces of nature, the 'Indomitable' isn’t indomitable; it’s vulnerable, and can be destroyed by fate as capriciously as Billy himself is destroyed. Through the orchestra, the ocean takes central stage, turbulent and intense. Huge crescendos build up like mighty waves, but even more impressive is the undertow of dark, murmuring sound that surges ever forwards. Above this, currents flowed diagonally across the orchestra, first violins flowing to brass and basses and back, just as ships lurch back and forth. You could get seasick if you focussed too hard, but that is the point, for Britten is showing that the “floating world” aboard ship is unsteady, far removed from the certainties of dry land. Just like the enveloping mists, all points of moral reference are hidden. “Lost in the infinite sea”, sings Captain Vere, a refrain that recurs repeatedly, in voice and in the orchestra.

This ship is in full sail, you can feel the wind and see the open horizon. This is an important to the narrative, because it reflects the sense that supernatural forces are propelling Billy and Captain Vere inevitably towards their fate. More subtly though, this also expresses something about why Billy loves being up high in the foretop, riding the rigging, high up on the mast. He’s such a free spirit that even death cannot extinguish him. That’s why, perhaps, that he moves ahead, always forward, instead of dwelling on past sorrows. “No more looking down from the heights to the depths !” he sings, “I’ve sighted a sail in the storm…I see where she’s bound for.” It's not for nothing that Britten starts the opera with Vere reflecting on the past and ends with him being liberated, at last understanding what Billy meant. Britten has been Harding’s speciality since he was in his teens, when he was conducting the Britten Sinfonia. Most of his career has been spent in European circles, where Britten’s music is perhaps less performed than in Britain, but this is an advantage because it makes his approach feel so individual. He has also worked with the LSO and with Bostridge for over 12 years, so the partnership is deeply rooted. Hence the vividness and cohesion in this performance. Take for example the Battle sequence, which bristled with vigour and alertness. There, extreme tension built up in the orchestra, instruments and voices traversing the music in stark staccato, and disciplined formation. Everything seems to be going on at the same time in different directions, voices interjecting, solo instruments leaping into prominence, the choir at full blast. Yet it’s all clearly defined and distinct. To stretch the maritime metaphor a little further: a conductor is like the captain of a ship and there are many reasons why precision gets results. Conductors, like captains, don’t waffle aimlessly and confuse their players, but lead their crew purposefully into action.
One of Harding’s particular strengths is his ability to focus on the fundamental direction of whatever music he conducts. Thus he understands the Battle in the wider context of the opera: jus as the men are about to board the French ship, mist descends and the French escape. The excitement builds to fever pitch but descends into anti-climax. Nothing is resolved. It’s another parallel to Captain Vere’s dilemma, when he pulls back from saving Billy even though he knows in his heart that he could /should do so, if only he dared.

Britten's writing for Vere is the most complex in the whole opera, for he is its true centre. The men call don't call him "Starry Vere", for nothing, and the "God Bless you, Starry Vere" chorus is beautifully transcendant. Like Billy, his natural habitat is way, way above the decks and hold where Claggart and his brutish bullies reign. Britten has him spouting about Scylla and Charybdis, for he's educated, an intellectual, someone who thinks and makes moral judgements. In contrast, the other characters, even Billy, merely act and react without much mental process. Captain Vere represents the finer part of mankind, capable of seeing beyond and above the immediate. Ian Bostridge is a perfect Vere, tortured and intense, utterly aware of the portent of what he must do. Even in old age, he can't find resolution until he realizes that each man is ultimately master of his own fate, and Billy's choice, so beautifully expressed in the song Through the port comes moonshine astray, was a vision Billy could live by and die with, whatever Vere might have done. Nathan Gunn's Billy at first bothered me because his voice is so light : yet why not ? Billy is a symbol, an ideal, and is a counterpart to Vere on a less sophisticated level. This performance showed how he, too, is 0ne of Britten's innocents, doomed because purity itself is doomed by fate itself, rather than by the actions of others, That's why Vere gets deliverance. Billy Budd deserves its place in the pantheon of Britten's most profound work.GET THIS RECORDING !