264. Billy Budd (Britten)

• Opera in 2 acts (originally in 4)
• Composer: Benjamin Britten
• Libretto: E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, adapted from the story by Herman Melville
• First performed: Royal Opera House, London, UK, 1^st December 1951, conducted by Britten. Revised 1964.

---

Characters

EDWARD FAIRFAX VERE, Captain of H.M.S. ‘Indomitable’	Tenor	Peter Pears
BILLY BUDD, foretopman	Baritone	Theodor Uppman
JOHN CLAGGART, Master-at-Arms	Bass	Frederick Dalberg
MR. REDBURN, First Lieutenant	Baritone	Hervey Alan
MR. FLINT, Sailing Master	Bass-Baritone	Geraint Evans
LIEUTENANT RATCLIFFE	Bass	Michael Langdon
RED WHISKERS, an impressed man	Tenor	Anthony Marlowe
DONALD, a sailor	Baritone	Bryan Drake
DANSKER, an old seaman	Bass	Inia Te Wiata
NOVICE	Tenor	William McAlpine
SQUEAK, a ship’s corporal	Tenor	David Tree
BOSUN	Baritone	Ronald Lewis
FIRST MATE	Baritone	Rhydderch Davies
SECOND MATE	Baritone	Hubert Littlewood
MAINTOP	Tenor	Emlyn Jones
NOVICE’S FRIEND	Baritone	John Cameron
ARTHUR JONES, an impressed man	Baritone	Alan Hobson
FOUR MIDSHIPMEN	Boys’ voices	Brian Ettridge Kenneth Nash Peter Spencer Colin Waller
CABIN BOY	Spoken	Peter Flynn
Officers, Sailors, Powder Monkeys, Drummers, Marines

SCENE: On board the ‘Indomitable’, a seventy-four, during the French wars of 1797.

---

Billy Budd is one of two Benjamin Britten operas I have seen live, at the Sydney Opera House, 15 years ago. It was a powerful opera, I remember, and I was glad to return to it.

Billy Budd takes place aboard a man o’ war, and is one of the few operas with an all-male cast. As the sailors in South Pacific sing: “There is [quite literally] nothing like a dame.” Billy Budd was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain in connection with the Festival of Britain, but most critics considered it inferior to Peter Grimes (1945). Nine years later, Britten revised the work, reducing its four acts to two, and cutting a couple of scenes. These days, Billy Budd is seen as one of Britten’s best works, while apparently it has cult status in the gay community: the composer was gay, the librettists were gay, it was based on a story by a gay writer, and it is (on at least one level) about homosexual desire. (Hence William Walton’s quip: “The Buggers’ Opera”.)

The opera, an adaptation of Herman Melville’s novella, is framed by the elderly Captain Vere, reflecting on his actions in 1797, “in the difficult and dangerous days after the Mutiny at the Nore”, when he commanded the H.M.S. Indomitable.

Life aboard a sailing ship is hardly the rosy picture G. & S. paint in H.M.S. Pinafore. It is an oppressive society, based on fear and bullying. The captain is well-meaning but ineffectual; the officers are jingoists (“Don’t like the French”); and the men (many of them pressganged) are flogged for trivial offences (like tripping or stumbling into an officer). It’s not the most flattering depiction of John Bull.

But there is innocence here, too, in the form of the handsome young sailor, Billy Budd, devoted to his captain and to his king, but, as Captain Vere reflects in the prologue, even goodness has a defect: Billy is afflicted with a stammer that stops him from expressing his feelings.

The worst of the lot is ‘Jemmy-Legs’ Claggart, Master-at-Arms, and one of the great rôles of twentieth-century opera. He dominates the opera: cavernous-voiced, his presence announced by ominous bassoons, like Wagner’s Fafner. But he can recognize Billy’s goodness, lust for it, and want to destroy it. His Act I soliloquy, “O beauty, O handsomeness, O goodness”, modelled on Iago’s Credo in Verdi‘s Otello, depicts “passion – love constricted, perverted, poisoned, but nevertheless flowing down its agonising channel; a sexual discharge gone evil”, the librettist, E. M. Forster (the Passage to India man), said.

Claggart accuses Billy of mutiny; the sailor, who cannot express himself due to his stammer, strikes out in a fury, and Claggart falls dead. Reluctantly, Captain Vere allows Billy to be hanged; the Articles of War require it. Billy attains almost Christ or Balder-like proportions: the beautiful youth slain; the good man who is tried and goes willingly to his death. Captain Vere is a more sympathetic Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of the decision.

Billy Budd is, critics say, a more difficult work than Peter Grimes: Bridcut writes that “enjoyment of is many thrills and delights is harder-won”, and almost nothing happens. Those views were echoed by the contemporary critics. Richard Capell (The Daily Telegraph, 3 December 1951) thought much of Billy Budd “seems episodical and almost purposeless, despite the extraordinary resource and aptness of Britten’s musical illustrations. Then the climax comes, and it is harrowing in its pathos. No one can fail to be moved, any more than admiration can be grudged for the vivacity of the score. But the long piece is pathetic rather than truly tragic, and the attempt made to draw a universal significance from the hero’s doom is not brought home.”

Likewise, Neville Cardus (The Manchester Guardian, 15 December 1951) was disappointed by the music, which he thought more appropriate to stage or film accompaniment. “It is simply not possible to make an opera largely out of an orchestral running-commentary on a stage action which contains little development of character, with much vocal recitative plastered on top of instrumentation – no doubt resourceful and fascinating to musicians, – harmonics in evocative position, etchings in colours that flash suddenly, every device in Britten’s superb equipment used economically, with a sense of the theatre rare among English composers.”

But Billy Budd has a stronger story than Grimes; a shipboard setting is far more interesting than dreary Suffolk villages; and Claggart, Billy, and Vere more compelling (certainly more archetypal) characters than the fisherfolk. Musically, much of the best music is written for combinations of male voices: the “Heave away!” chorus; an oddly moving ensemble after the Novice has been whipped; “Blow! Blow! Blow!” (a swell of choral sound); or (for light relief) “We’re off to Samoa by way of Genoa”.

The battle scene (“This is our moment!”) at the start of Act II is very effective. Notable, too, are the trial (Britten is excellent at little ensembles that are attractive without stopping the flow of the drama); Billy’s tender monologue (“Through the port comes the moonshine astray”); and the hanging scene (ending in the sailors’ guttural, wordless cries).

---

Recordings

Listen to: Peter Glossop (Billy Budd), Peter Pears (Captain Vere), and Michael Langdon (John Claggart), with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Britten; London, 1967. Decca. (This was also broadcast on the BBC; but Glossop is physically wrong for the part.)

---

Works consulted

• Richard Capell, The Daily Telegraph, 3 December 1951
• Neville Cardus, The Manchester Guardian, 15 December 1951
• John Bridcut, The Faber Pocket Guide to Britten, London: Faber & Faber, 2010