Billy Budd

With a libretto adapted from Melville’s novella Billy Budd, Foretopman by the novelist E.M. Forster, assisted by Eric Crozier, Britten’s second full-scale opera concerns an able seaman “impressed” into a British man-of-war during the Napoleonic Wars. Handsome and amiable, William (Billy) Budd soon becomes popular among the crew—a notable exception being the master-at-arms, John Claggart. In a soliloquy both menacing and of dark grandeur, Claggart, who controls the crew through brutality, explicitly fears Billy’s beneficial influence. Yet the opera is not simply about Billy and Claggart: Claggart’s evil is unconsciously harboured by HMS Indomitable’s self-satisfied and capriciously bullying officers (a remarkably subversive depiction for an English opera in 1951), while Captain Vere—despite recognising the essential goodness of Budd and Claggart’s perfidy—is ultimately trapped by the demands of wartime discipline. Britten magnificently overcomes the technical challenge of writing for an all-male cast (with just relatively small roles for boys, who appear as midshipmen and powder monkeys) without any conventional love interest. Highlights include Billy’s aria “Look! Through the port comes the moon-shine astray!”, and a below-decks scene in which the crew raise their spirits with shanty singing. Meanwhile, Britten deftly suggests the ever-present sea, whether the dreamy string and woodwind musings that introduce Captain Vere’s cabin, or the boisterous deep brass with billowing woodwind and strings that suggest wind and water even as they echo the sailors’ sea shanties.