BENJAMIN BRITTEN
BILLY BUDD
CONTENTS
P.
4
SYNOPSIS P.
8
SIX QUESTIONS PUT TO CONDUCTOR MARK WIGGLESWORTH P.
12
BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S LIFE ANDREAS LÁNG P.
15
THE SIGN OF THE EVILDOER HANNAH ARENDT P.
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THE SEA AS A SETTING FOR LIFE AND WORK DOROTHEA STEINER
P.
22
THE GENESIS OF THE OPERA BILLY BUDD ANDREAS LÁNG P.
24
THE CLASH OF THE TITANS PATRICIA HODA P.
30
I’VE SIGHTED A SAIL IN THE STORM WILLY DECKER P.
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A HIT OF EPIC BEAUTY OLIVER LÁNG P.
38
IMPRINT
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
BILLY BUDD OPERA in four acts Text EDWARD MORGAN FORSTER & ERIC CROZIER based on a story by HERMAN MELVILLE
ORCHESTRA
4 flutes / 2 oboes / 1 cor anglais 2 clarinets / 1 bass clarinet 1 alto saxophone / 2 bassoons 1 contrabassoon / 4 horns 4 trumpets / 3 trombones / 1 tuba timpani / percussion / 1 harp violin I / violin II / viola cello / double bass STAGE MUSIC 4 drums
AUTOGRAPH Privately owned, on permanent loan to the Britten-Pears Library, Aldeburgh WORLD PREMIÈRE 1 DEC 1951 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London PREMIÈRE AT THE HOUSE ON THE RING 12 FEB 2001 Vienna State Opera DURATION
3H
INCL. 1 INTERMISSION
BILLY BUDD
SYNOPSIS PROLOGUE Captain Edward Fairfax Vere is an old man. He reflects on the French Wars of 1797 and the year of the great mutinies. At the time, he was in command of the man-of-war HMS Indomitable and committed a grave error for which he could never make amends...
ACT 1 The work is hard on a big man-of-war whose crew consists largely of press-ganged help from various social strata. The widespread unrest amongst the men is due to the latest mu tinies at Spithead and Nore, where brutal treatment at the hands of the officers led to an uprising amongst the crew. The tension is evident when Mr. Flint, the sailing master, and the bosun wield their authority in sentencing a novice to twenty strokes of the cat for his clumsiness. A party returns from a press-ganging expedition. John Claggart, the master-at-arms, questions the three new recruits. The first, Red Whiskers, complains of his violent recruitment and is beaten up by Claggart. The second, Arthur Jones, meekly accepts his fate. Only the young Billy Budd is enthusiastic about life on a big warship. With his good looks, his energy and spontaneity, he is immediately likeable. He has but one failing: he starts stammering uncontrollably in moments of stress. Billy Budd is assigned to the foretop watch. This is more than he had hoped for. He exuberantly says farewell to the ship on which he previously served: Farewell, Rights o’Man. The assembled company finds this rather troubling. “Rights of man” became a term of provocation for English royalists during the French Revolution and is considered by seafarers to be tantamount to mutiny. Previous pages: KS SIR SIMON KEENLYSIDE as BILLY BUDD JAMES MORRIS as CLAGGART
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SYNOPSIS
The distrustful officers order Claggart in keep an eye on Billy Budd. Claggart forces his underling Squeak to go through Billy’s things in order to provoke him. The novice who has been flogged comes back on deck. Billy is distressed by this senseless brutality. He is warned about Claggart’s malicious nature. Captain Vere addresses the ship’s company in a rousing speech, preparing them for battle. The men are ready to go through hell and high water for their captain. Billy too is elated: “I would give my life for you, Starry Vere!” he cries out. Everyone identifies with this sentiment.
ACT 2 Captain Vere has retired to his cabin to read and think. He invites his senior officers, Mr. Redburn and Mr. Flint, to join him, and together they drink to victory over France. The two officers warn Vere about Billy Budd, who has spoken aloud about the “rights of man” and may be planning a mutiny. But Vere is certain that the young man does not represent a threat. When land is sighted, the officers leave the captain alone. Billy finds Squeak rummaging through his kit-bag. A fight between Billy and Squeak ensues until Claggart arrives to separate them. He heartlessly has Squeak thrown into chains. Left alone, Claggart drops his mask; he is filled with jealousy and hate for everything good and beautiful. Everyone likes young Billy, while he himself can get others to work for him only by force. Now that Squeak has failed, he seeks out the unfortunate novice to help him destroy Billy Budd. He instructs the novice to bribe Billy that he must lead a fictitious mutiny. Terrified, the novice carries out Claggart’s order. When he wakes Billy and offers him the money Claggart has given him, Billy is seized with a stammering fit, which only subsides when Billy tells his friend, old Dansker, what has happened. Dansker knows that only Claggart can be behind all this. Billy is unwilling to believe him; rather, he had been expecting a promotion. After all, the master-at-arms had praised him in front of the entire crew.
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BILLY BUDD
ACT 3 The Indomitable is caught in a thick mist. Claggart sets up his devilish intrigue: he warns the captain of a threat from his own ranks. The discussion is interrupted when an enemy ship is sighted. The crew feverishly prepares for a cannon attack. Pressured by the officers, Vere prematurely fires a shot at the enemy ship. The attack falls, since the ship is still out of range. Everything was in vain. Claggart and Captain Vere continue their discussion, and the master- at-arms accuses Billy Budd of being a paid agitator. Furious, Vere demands that Claggart repeat this accusation in Billy’s presence. Billy comes to see Vere. However, instead of being promoted, he finds himself charged with mutiny. He is unable to defend himself because of his stammer. In his frustration, he lashes out at Claggart, who falls to the floor, dead. Shaken, Captain Vere is convinced of Billy’s innocence. Nevertheless, he summons his officers to pass sentence on Billy Budd. There is only one punishment in wartime: death by hanging. Vere himself informs Billy of the verdict.
ACT 4 Billy awaits his death. He learns from Dansker that the crew is prepared to free him. However, Billy is prepared to die. The crew gathers for the sentence to be carried out. Just before he dies, Billy calls out: “God bless you, Starry Vere.” Deeply moved, the crew takes up his cry. After the sentence has been carried out, a muttering is heard from the crew – but the charisma of the captain placates the angry men.
EPILOGUE Old Vere realises that although he condemned Billy unjustly, he also liberated him. He makes peace with his memories.
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KS ADRIAN ERÖD as BILLY BUDD
CONDUCTOR MARK WIGGLESWORTH IN AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREAS LÁNG
SIX QUESTIONS PUT TO CONDUCTOR MARK WIGGLESWORTH al
Benjamin Britten is one of the classic modernism composers whose works have become firmly established in international repertoires. What is it in particular about his musical language that makes him so extraordinary? mw I believe Britten’s operas have a quality that really only comes through fully in performance. When you study his scores, you are aware of what he is doing in terms of craftsmanship. His music is very clear, so clear that you sometimes wonder if perhaps it isn’t a bit too clear. But when you hear and experience it, you are overwhelmed by an unexpected element that is suddenly present. The audience understands all the characters and situations in Britten’s operas, they feel close to them and what they are experiencing, and they can see things from the characters’ perspective. It is wonderful to me that Britten is so well received as a composer of opera, because he shows what opera
really can achieve – even in musical language that makes it difficult to sing along to melodies. But you are deeply moved by the dramatic events on stage. al Is that why Billy Budd is so suitable as an introductory opera for those who are new to opera? mw Well, the drama is incredibly effective by itself because the characters are so clearly drawn. Then there’s the music, which also has its effect on a subconscious level. Young people who are wondering whether opera is a medium they will understand can follow this opera just as they can a film or a play. al Which composers had the greatest influence on Britten’s work? mw Mozart, definitely... and Verdi, for sure. Britten knew how to tease out exactly the right tempo for the text being set to music. What I mean by that is that Britten knew precisely how to fit out a text and certain words in music, so that they are conveyed ideally in theatrical terms. So you feel the text through his music – just like Mozart or Verdi.
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SIX QUESTIONS PUT TO CONDUCTOR MARK WIGGLESWORTH
al
In Billy Budd there are key passages that are purely orchestral. How do these differ from the big interludes in Peter Grimes, the other major opera by Benjamin Britten, which also has strong ties to the sea? mw There is actually a big difference. In Peter Grimes the sea represents everything happening outside. And that is above all the community of townsfolk, a community to which Peter Grimes cannot belong. In Billy Budd, the entirety of which takes place on the high seas, you don’t hear the sea at all. You hear the movement of the ship on the sea. After all, the ship is an analogy for a self-contained world. Very claustrophobic and very intense because everyone is trapped. The storm erupts over the ship, there are fights and internal problems, but no one can leave this narrow cosmos and go their own way. al Let’s stay with the orchestra. Are there any special features in the orchestration? mw Two things are very important: firstly, there is a large percussion section, especially the low drums. At a very basic level they reflect the tension of battle. However, the battle with the French is of course a kind of symbol for the battle that people have to wage with themselves. Britten uses the rhythmic tension of the drums to make this
inner conflict audible. Secondly, it is interesting that we are dealing predominantly with dark acoustic colours. There are a lot of low woodwinds that reflect the emotions abounding in the steerage. This corresponds to the fact that there are only male voices in the opera. Everything seems to come from the belly of the ship. The high notes, on the other hand, feel somewhat disconnected from emotions. al Is Britten trying to send us a message through this piece, through this small, self-contained cosmos? mw I don’t necessarily think the piece is terribly political. But there is a message and that is: if we do nothing, we will regret it. Vere regrets not standing up for Billy. If we don’t look after other people, if we don’t protect those who are in trouble, then we ourselves end up being the victims. We are often asked why we select a particular work to perform. And our answer is: because the issues that are raised here are timely. It would be nice if a performance made the audience think about their own decisions and the choices they make in life. Vere is a broken man at the end because he didn’t have the courage to stand up. He was weak. It is very tempting to be weak. But that cannot be the right course of action.
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Following pages: KS BO SKOVHUS as BILLY BUDD
ANDREAS LÁNG
BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S LIFE It’s not surprising that the sea plays a central role in several of Benjamin Britten’s operas (including Billy Budd), given that Britten was born in the East Anglian port of Lowestoft in 1913. More precisely, on the southern edge of the town. From his parents’ house, he could see the sea directly, hear the storms and wind, and watch the boats and ships. The composer spent 21 years at his birthplace, and later he was unwilling and unable to stay away from the sea for long. He once looked back and commented: “I tried to live away from the sea, but I always felt something was wrong. I feel at home in this environment. The fishermen in their boats, all this is part of my life, I can’t live without it.” Besides the sea, the strongest influence on Benjamin Britten in his early years was his mother, Edith. She was intent right from the start on making her son (the fourth and youngest child) into a musical genius. In contrast to his father, a strict, ascetically included and industrious dentist, the mother had perfect pitch and was highly musical. A sickly child, Benjamin Britten had his first piano lessons from her before enrolling with the local piano teacher,
who also gave him singing and harmony lessons. He also had viola lessons with another teacher. It was not long before Benjamin Britten produced his first compositions, together with the first theatrical efforts. In 1920, for example, the seven-year-old wrote the drama The Royal Family, together with a short melody of his own. At the latest at the age of 13, when he passed a piano exam with distinction, it was clear to Benjamin Britten that he would be a composer. This was although he was also clearly mathematically gifted. His math teacher, a sadistic former officer who beat his pupils, was constantly trying to steer him away from music and towards mathematics. But this was in vain. The teacher did, however, serve as a model for various negative figures in Britten’s oeuvre, including John Claggart in Billy Budd. Significant influences on Britten’s further development as a musician and composer in the next few years were his composition teacher Frank Bridge and the works of Arnold Schönberg and Gustav Mahler. Britten tried to improve his craft wherever possible, in order to find the ideal expression for his own musical language.
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BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S LIFE
When his Sinfonietta op. 1 received its world première in January 1933 at the Ballet Club of the Mercury Theatre, he received his first bad review in the Daily Telegraph, which left the young composer feeling insecure. Even so, he created one new work after another, despite suffering personal calamities. His father died in 1934, followed three years later by his mother. However, the musical world gradually became aware of the aspiring composer, who seemed to be at home in the widest possible range of genres – all the way to film music. In the early 1930s Britten became increasingly concerned about the political situation. On a 1934 trip to experience the outstanding opera performances in Vienna and Munich, he recognised the dangers the National Socialist reign of terror posed to himself, his fellow composers and his country. A few months before the outbreak of the Second World War, the committed pacifist emigrated to the USA, together with his lifelong companion, the tenor Peter Pears. However, a combination of concern about his siblings and homesickness drove him to return to England in 1942, in the middle of the war. During his return journey, Benjamin Britten worked on his first
opera, Peter Grimes, which received its world première at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre on 7 June 1945, shortly after the end of the war in Europe. This work sparked a kind of renaissance in the English music theatre. In the next few years there was hardly any season without a world première of a Britten opera – The Rape of Lucretia (1946), Albert Herring (1947), The Little Sweep (1949), Billy Budd (1951), Gloriana (1953), The Turn of the Screw (1954). The centre of the composer’s life from this time to his death was the English coastal town of Aldeburgh, still home to this day of the annual Aldeburgh Festival, which Britten founded. From 1945, most of his compositions were written at this East Anglian port, although Britten made numerous world trips and concert tours with Peter Pears. Benjamin Britten’s health began to deteriorate around the 1960’s at the latest. There was a clear break with the diagnosis of endocarditis. Severely ill, Britten was confined to a wheelchair, where he wrote parts of his last opera, Death in Venice. On 12 June 1976 Queen Elizabeth II dubbed the mortally ill composer Baron Britten of Aldeburgh. Britten died just a few months later, in the night of 3-4 December 1976.
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HANNAH ARENDT
THE SIGN OF THE EVILDOER Melville clearly took the mythical original crime where Cain slew Abel, so extremely decisive for the tradition of our political thought, and reversed it, in a way which was neither arbitrary nor accidental. It was in fact the result of the reversal by the people of the French Revolution in response to the doctrine of Original Sin – people are born with goodness, not sin. Melville himself says in the preface to Billy Budd what question lies at the heart of history. How is it possible, he asks, that the rectification of the Old World’s hereditary wrongs [was followed by] the Revolution itself becoming a wrongdoer, one more oppressive than the kings? His answer was extremely surprising in the context of our history and the association of goodness with humility and weakness – good is strong, stronger than elemental evil, and it accordingly shares a fundamental violence with this evil which all strength inclines to, and which is the curse of all forms of political organisations. It is as if Melville was saying, let us assume for once that the basis of all political organisation is that Abel slew Cain, and good triumphed over evil with violence. Do you not see that this act of violence will have the same unjust consequences that we are familiar with in history, except that humanity cannot comfort itself with the idea that the violence which brings misery into the world and is accordingly described and prosecuted as criminal is solely the sign of the evildoer? ERIC HALFVARSON as CLAGGART KS NEIL SHICOFF as CAPTAIN VERE
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DOROTHEA STEINER
THE SEA AS A SETTING FOR LIFE & WORK HERMANN MELVILLE’S BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN Hermann Melville’s life spanned almost the entire 19th century. Born in 1819, died in 1891, he lived through the period generally known today as the birth of Western imperialism. The British Empire and Anglo-American colonisation on the global scale were sustained influences, like the evolution of the USA from its original 13 states on the east coast to a continental nation at the time of the “closing of the frontier” in 1890, when the West was opened up, the nation politically united, slaves liberated, and the mass immigration from Europe at the end of the century found its symbol of a brighter future in the Statue of Liberty. New York as the start and end of his life tied Melville as a youth to the oceans of the world and would give him a secure livelihood as a customs inspector in his later years. After a minimal education and various jobs, the 20-year-old began his maritime career, travelling on the St. Lawrence to Liverpool in 1839, then on
the whaling ship Acushnet to the South Sea, where he escaped from cannibals on the Marquesas islands on the Australian ship Lucy Ann, returning home as a sailor on the frigate United States after a spell in prison on Tahiti as a mutineer and months in Honolulu. He immediately began to write about his experiences at sea between June 1839 and October 1844 in a whole series of novels – Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), Mardi and Redburn (1849), and WhiteJacket (1850), all successful (except Mardi) as popular literature; the pinnacle was Moby-Dick (1851), although this was significantly different from its predecessors. His readership appreciated the combination of realism and the exotic, the focus on the contrast between the “primitive” and the “civilised”, triggering longings as well as fears, the motifs of roaming leading to picaresque and mythical worlds, and the world of the seafarer and the ship as a great brotherhood and microcosm.
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THE SEA AS A SETTING FOR LIFE AND WORK
Under the influence of political and philosophical writers and the English drama of the Renaissance, Melville’s thoughts about state and society, democracy and power, the meaning of life, the question of evil in the world and dark, threatening powers in human life and society all became increasingly important in his writing. Melville’s writing became philosophical and his popularity declined. Captain Ahab’s struggle with the white whale became a struggle against invincible evil itself, driving the protagonist to madness. After this work of epic dimensions, which took Melville far beyond the limits of the novel in other genres and into a complex tonality, the author turned in the following years to new themes and milieux, as shown by titles like Pierre, The Ambiguities and The Confidence Man. In his short story Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street, reprinted in The Piazza Tales (1856), Melville returns to the question of the meaning of life in a big city setting for a growing dollar empire. The story foreshadows Billy Budd, not only through the increased emphasis on the psychological treatment of ethical and existential questions but also through the introduction of a narrator representing the “normal” middle class American, who claims to have the major virtues and as such falls short of being the “different” hero. This is because “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, as realised in a success story based on industry, prosperity and optimism and a pragmatic attitude of fairness to other people, seems unrealistic as a model for everyone. And this is where the ambiguity emerges which left Melville’s readership insecure. Clear attitudes waver, boundaries blur, deci-
sions are no longer correct, social morals lose their force. The question of right and justice proves unanswerable in relation to humanity. Pragmatic solutions are no answer to the question of the meaning of life. The abyss yawns if human communication fails, if a Bartleby figure no longer says “I prefer not to”, rejecting the attainment of the American dream, or if Billy Budd’s stutter can betray him into guilt. There is no place for misfits in a world of clear rules. Given the intractable situation of his characters, should Melville be labelled a “cosmic pessimist”, as the overwhelming majority of critics have done for so long? Certainly, the events of the 19th century helped raise doubts among Americans that their high ideals and the claim to be an extraordinary nation might not be justified in the face of its evolution into a materialistic and equally racist class society. However, even in his earlier, picaresque phase Melville was never a superficial realist, and incorporated criticism of civilisation in his South Sea novels, along with the theme of the “failed quest” in search of new and better worlds, and the precariousness of survival in an unfathomable world, just as he recognised the intrinsic value of the “primitive” world. Nevertheless, there is growing suspicion in his later work of any tidy system of order and its binding nature. From 1857 he turned his back entirely on narrative prose and only wrote poetry – one volume a decade for the rest of his life, where the best known was Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, an attempt to come to terms with the national tragedy, closing tellingly with elegies to winners and losers. The moral dilemma stayed with Melville’s work,
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DOROTHEA STEINER
which increasingly sought a balance between the internal and external world. When, years after his death, the manuscript for Billy Budd, Foretopman appeared as a complete surprise in Mrs Melville’s old bread bin, it was clear that Melville’s last words on this topic were again set in the context of the sea. The maritime world was not limited to Melville’s early days – this work confirms its enduring force in his consciousness. The bread bin was found in his family seat in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Arrowhead (named after the Native American arrowheads found in the surrounding fields – a significant indication of the importance of other cultures in is life). This lies in the Berkshires, a setting which, although far from the coast, had a distinctive effect on the poet. “I have a sort of sea feeling here in the country. My room seems a ship’s cabin; and at nights when I wake up and hear the wind shrieking, I almost fancy there is too much sail on the house, and I had better go on the roof and rig in the chimney.” The Melvilles lived there from 1850 to 1863. Melville wrote Moby-Dick in sight of his local mountain, Mount Greylock, which he said looked like a sperm whale “rising in the distance.” Melville started the story of the “handsome sailor” condemned for the murder of a superior to hang at the yardarm of the man of war HMS Indomitable in 1888, after 31 years’ absence from prose. He completed it half a year before his death in September 1891. After its first publication in 1924 under the title Billy Budd, Foretopman (although already with the later sub-title An Inside Narrative), a second edition appeared in 1949, the year when Britten decided to set this for his opera.
In 1962, following the revision of the opera in a two-act version, the researchers Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts issued the “definitive version.” As a character, Billy Budd, the “hand some sailor”, presents several analogies. THERE IS THE BIBLICAL one, between Adam (before the Fall) and the innocent Joseph, murdered by his brothers. THE CLASSICAL-GREEK one, between the young Alexander on the one hand and Apollo and Hercules on the other hand (as masculine icons of beauty and strength). THE COUNTER-CIVILISATIONAL one, between the “noble savages” and the speechless Kaspar Hauser. THE PUN, between human rights and military force (Budd moved from the Rights-of-Man to the Indomitable). THE PROTOT YPICAL one (with nationalistic components) between The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain’s version, the children of the New World and their institutions who have to fail for lack of respect (cf. Henry James’ Daisy Miller) and Parzival, the “ignorant fool”, who becomes guilty out of ignorance. Billy Budd’s partners in a completely male world (whose homoerotic features were only recognised in the critical reviews of the 1990s) are the master-atarms John Claggart and Captain Vere. Claggart’s accusation that Budd is an agitator must be seen historically in
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THE SEA AS A SETTING FOR LIFE AND WORK
the context of the 1797 mutinies, made possible by the emancipatory and anarchistic ideas of the French Revolution. The grievances on the Navy ships were striking but were generally papered over with little improvement in the living conditions of the crews, as they involved England’s naval primacy, which Admiral Nelson definitively established in 1798 and 1805. Budd’s execution was a deterrent, guaranteeing the maintenance of order and power. While Vere is faced by the question of “conscience versus reasons of state” or moral justice versus the laws of war on the human level, this must be rejected a priori (the “imperial conscience” at work). This also reflects the cultural heritage of the Victorian era with its categorical gender-based juxta position of masculine and feminine, rational and emotional, objective and subjective, internal and superficial. At various points Budd’s innocence takes on “feminine” associations (hints to his childlike nature, virtue, purity; images of – vestal – virgins). Melville’s choice of narrator plays a decisive role in the moral balance of the action. It avoids any suggestion of a black and white interpretation at any point. His attitude is one of a search for truth, and although he repeatedly refers to the realistic concerns of his story, it is clear that he is a fan of what Melville’s colleague Nathaniel Hawthorne calls “romance.” In contrast to the novel, this presents the possibilities rather than what is probable, giving the freest possible rein to the imagination, so that the inner truth (“truth of the human heart”) can be presented. How balanced this attitude is, is shown in the presentation of the captain. He upholds the formalities by
condemning Billy to death personally; the idea that other factors are involved here is described as conjectural. Billy’s last words are “God bless Captain Vere”, and while these are convincing as a simple expression of respect, they can also mean “God have mercy on him” (since he has acted against his conscience). If irony is involved, it is a mild form, compatible with the moderate attitude of the sympathetic narrator, who wants to convey that people do not have the final answers. Their decisions inherently include error and failure. In Greek tragedy, the hero has a flaw which destroys him. He tries to do everything in good faith, but ultimately this does not save him from death. This is the will of fate. Billy Budd is not in this mould, although we are tempted to see him as a tragic hero. Why? He stands for good, he abhors violence, he radiates peace and joy, he has strength, charisma, popularity, and seems destined for success. Why does he have to fail? There is more than one answer. He is too successful, bordering on hubris. He is “chosen” from the start, which suggests testing. He is an American hero, someone who thinks he can be happy outside the scheme of things. And this is where the utopian dream of human (“masculine”!) fulfilment is reflected, at the “frontier”, the boundary with the wilderness, which is repeatedly restrained by the control of civilisation. In this case it is so extreme that Claggart as the arm of order takes on the features of a cruel and omnipotent god, claiming “retributive righteousness”, the penalty for a crime committed in all innocence. Billy’s distraught reaction when he learns of Claggart’s machinations shows his purity in the sense of lack
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THE SEA AS A SETTING FOR LIFE AND WORK
of suspicion. There is no rebirth in his life from the experience of evil. Billy remains a utopian hero of the New World, which (as Goethe said) has the benefit of less moral baggage. The puritan conscience requires lifelong self-examination. But a Billy Budd is beyond introspection. The “inside narrative” does not take us to his heart, but to the heart of the humanity needing salvation. He is not such a person. To understand his heroism, we must look at Melville’s experience of other
cultures which were often unable to comprehend Western Christian thought. However, like Billy Budd, they were overwhelmed by the West, with its absolutist claims, its dialectic, and its view of good and evil, guilt and atonement. Perhaps Melville is trying to express in Billy Budd, Foretopman that a new paradise will emerge if a simple sailor can find his right to life. So long as this is not possible, a captain has the clear right to act without cavil, a murderer must be hanged, and authors must protest.
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KS KURT RYDL as CLAGGART
ANDREAS LÁNG
THE GENESIS OF THE OPERA BILLY BUDD Benjamin Britten was not the first composer to set to music Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, a story that was discovered posthumously in 1920. As early as 1949, the winner of the Italian Nobel Prize for literature, Salvatore Quasimodo, and the Italian composer Giorgio Federico Ghedini had created a version of the story for opera, but to date this has not otherwise left its mark on music history. Almost concurrently with this first musical adaptation of the story, Benjamin Britten received an invitation from the Arts Council of Great Britain to write an opera for a comprehensive and prestigious English project in 1951, the so-called Festival of Britain. English author Edward Morgan Forster was contracted as librettist, but he did not feel that his skills as a dramatist were up to the task, and so he brought in the British director and librettist Eric Crozier to collaborate with him. It soon became clear that Melville’s story Billy Budd would serve as the basis for the new opera, as Britten had already
considered setting it to music in 1948, i.e. before the Arts Council had officially commissioned the opera. Work on the libretto lasted throughout 1949, as the initial results did not immediately convince the lyricists and the composer, and several revisions therefore had to be undertaken. In the summer of 1950, Britten was finally able to devote himself to composing the music, which was completed in autumn of the following year. The world première, directed by Basil Coleman, took place on December 1, 1951 at the Opera House Covent Garden, with Theodor Uppman in the title role and Britten’s partner Peter Pears as Captain Vere; the performance was conducted by the composer himself. The German première, which took place just a few months later on March 2, 1952 in Wiesbaden, was followed by performances in Paris, Bloomington, and an NBC television recording in which Britten again participated as conductor and Pears as Vere.
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THE GENESIS OF THE OPER A BILLY BUDD
Although Benjamin Britten had originally intended Billy Budd to be a twoact opera, he ultimately settled on a four-act version. Since the long role of Vere did not come easily to Peter Pears, Britten revised the work again in 1960. The subsequently created shorter twoact version was first heard in a BBC broadcast on November 13, 1961 – again with Britten conducting – and the first staged performance of the two-act Billy Budd took place on January 9, 1964 at the Royal Opera House in London.
The dramatic and musical weakening of the work resulting from the 1960 revision (especially due to the elimination of Vere’s great speech in the finale of the former first act) soon gave rise to the idea of restoring the original score. Since this was finally presented by the two Britten researchers Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed, the original, superior first version could be presented at the Vienna State Opera for the first performance of Billy Budd in 2001.
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PAT R ICI A HODA
THE CLASH OF THE TITANS At first glance, Billy Budd depicts a conflict that has existed since time immemorial: the struggle between the two primal forces of good and evil. “Claggart, the villain of the story, is for the most part portrayed as a man who is evil by birth, whereas the hero, Billy Budd, is portrayed as a diametrically opposed character, the archetype of ’innocence.’ His very presence on board the ship arouses a spontaneous antipathy in Claggart, such that the latter’s sadistic nature cannot rest until it has played the serpent for this young Adam.” (Charles R. Anderson) For quite some time, this was also the preferred interpretation of the novella. William Plomer was the first to take homosexual undercurrents into account in his interpretations of Melville’s work. This resulted in a somewhat different relationship between the main characters: “the handsome sailor is a threat to naval authority because he presents sufficient strength in the face of hierarchical power. He represents eroticism in a world in which authority is preserved by banishing it. ... Billy’s arrival on the ship confronts him with the suppressed power of eroticism and the attempts of his police authority, represented by Claggart, to eradicate it. His condemnation
of Billy is a reassertion of the principle of power over love.” (Robert K. Martin) Claggart becomes a moral guardian whose job it is to prevent the practice of same-sex relationships or to eradicate even vague, budding tendencies, whereby awareness of one’s own sexual desires must not even be a possibility for a moment. If this happens, the cause must be eliminated immediately. This is probably what drew Forster to the subject and still inspires many a director today, as can be seen in Neil Armfield’s 1998 production of the work in Cardiff, although neither libretto nor music really support this interpretation. The Indomitable presented a portrayal of the human world determined by opposing forces. These are personified by characters who are initially strikingly different from one another. “Claggart is evil through and through; he possesses the perverted intelligence of a serpent, an intelligence used for irrational purposes. Billy Budd, by contrast, is pure innocence, acting and judging on instinct alone.” (Phil Within) Billy is not really fathomable as a character. He cannot be assigned to any social class, seems both masculine and
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THE CLASH OF THE TITANS
feminine, and is not conscious of his existence in the world. All of his actions characterise him as spontaneous and therefore unpredictable. All in all, he is too innocent, too good to even be real. He is different because he corresponds to an ideal. Thus it is hardly surprising that conclusions are drawn about mythological beings from the name Billy Budd. Mervyn Cooke, for example, sees a connection to the Celtic equivalent of Apollo. The god Apollo was worshipped by the Celts, especially in Roman times, using a variety of epithets, with his function as a healer being the main focus. In his capacity as a radiant god of light – and this seems to be of particular importance when comparing him with Billy Budd – the Celtic god Belenus corresponds most closely to him. There are also two other mythical figures whose phonetic similarity could also point to Billy Budd. Beli Mawr was a kind of Welsh god of the dead, an ancestor to whom the dead return. One of his sons was named Lludd. He was a peaceful and wise ruler in Britain. When his kingdom was struck by three plagues, he managed to restore peace to the kingdom thanks to the advice of his brother Llefelys. In the legend, Lludd is the life-sustainer, Llefelys the wise brother. The parallels between Billy Budd and any of the Celtic myths associated with him are far-fetched. Since in the epilogue, Vere sings of a blessing and salvation through Billy, a relationship with Christ is often pointed out. He took the guilt of the world upon himself. In order to do the same, Billy must first learn what guilt is. But Billy does not free anyone from any guilt. He is therefore not a second Christ. He is also not a victim of
an inhumane system. Billy Budd is not sacrificed to restore peace on the ship. Quite the contrary: his announced execution causes unrest. He is also not hanged because he is suspected of mutiny. The reasons for his violent departure from this life lie elsewhere. A comparison with Adam before the fall in the spirit of Milton’s Paradise Lost is more revealing here. In Genesis, we read how God created man and placed him in the Garden of Eden. At the same time, God creates other things: “and the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis 2:9). This tree is taboo for man, however. If God did not want people to eat from the tree, why did he plant it? The only plausible answer is that it was probably some kind of test. The serpent seduces Eve, who seduces Adam, and disaster ensues. Adam is not perfect, and Billy is not either. First of all, he stutters. In the prologue, Vere already ponders the imperfection of good. We hear the “stuttering motif.” In practical life, Billy’s innocence manifests itself as naivety. Despite repeated warnings, he refuses to believe in Claggart’s evil intentions. He is incapable of assuming anything bad about his fellow men and the world. Even being press-ganged to serve on a warship seems positive to him. For him, everything and everyone is beautiful and good, just as he is. As a representative of good, he is indeed ideal, but as a fighter, he is doomed to failure. His speech impediment makes verbal defence impossible, and so his only option is physical
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action. Social interaction has established rules that condemn such beh aviour, but Billy, although he gets along well with almost all of his comrades, is – like Peter Grimes – an outsider. “Billy’s beauty is, among other things, a manifestation of his goodness. He is an angelic visitor to this world, his lack of ancestry (he is a foundling) makes him an alien in the outside world as well.” (Barry Emslie) Billy has always lived outside the norms. This is what he and his opponent have in common. Claggart’s advantage, however, is that he knows the laws and can use them for his own purposes, but he certainly does not live by them. His world is just as one-sided as Billy’s. It is characterised by malice, brutality and meanness. Every little spark of light becomes a threat. Claggart and Billy cannot understand each other because neither of them believes the other is even possible. Billy doesn’t waste a thought on it. Claggart, on the other hand, devotes his entire monologue to this problem. Claggart has to destroy what disturbs him. It is beauty that threatens to drive him mad. To achieve his goal, he actually goes about things quite clumsily. Squeak and the newcomer are not exactly the first choice as henchmen of evil. The flimsy accusation he makes to the captain mainly reinforces his antipathy towards the Master-at-Arms. Shortly after the première, a critic stated: “The devil is not such a fool; he would never have got away with it if Billy’s fist had not intervened.” (Dean Winton) The serpent from Genesis is often mentioned in the same breath as Claggart. But if you look closely, he has nothing in common with it. He tries to put his plan into action through lies and
persistence. The serpent, however, only told the truth. Besides, Claggart does not entrap Billy Budd to do evil – unless it was part of his plan to discredit good by destroying evil. Now Claggart himself has already stated that he wishes to protect his world from good. If he could only do this through his own death, he would have gained nothing by doing so. Musically, Claggart’s monologue is often compared to Iago’s “credo” from Verdi’s Otello. But Claggart is not Iago, who pursues the total destruction of his enemy with diabolical thoroughness. Furthermore, Iago was allowed to enjoy what he did. The arrest could no longer diminish his actual triumph. He has fully exploited his power and experienced victory in full awareness. Claggart does not even get that far because Billy kills him first. Claggart is as unsuitable as a champion of the power of evil as Billy is as a fighter for good. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles”, Sunzi wrote. In this case, the opponents know themselves, but they have no or only very vague knowledge of their enemy, and so they are responsible for each other’s deaths. Claggart had not taken Billy’s spontaneity into account – a truly astonishing fact, considering that he had already warned Squeak about Billy’s temper. With the plan to destroy good, evil has eliminated itself. Inadvertently, good has also found itself in a life-threatening situation. Good and evil can only exist in each other’s presence. Something can seem good only in the moment when you realise that the opposite is also possible. Claggart’s key is actually F major. In his monologue,
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THE CLASH OF THE TITANS
we suddenly encounter A major. Since the late 1930s this key represented beauty and innocence for Britten. Claggart’s evil only really blossoms with the appearance of good in the form of Billy Budd. The more you look at him in relation to Claggart, the better he seems. They need each other, but their imperfection does not let them see this. The music of the trial, which begins after Claggart’s death, is strongly reminiscent of the accusation he made and his motif. The officers’ consultation takes place in F major. The dead Master-at-Arms is still present and exerting his influence.
With the elimination of the enemy, good has lost its reason to exist. Claggart actually succeeds in executing Billy Budd, albeit not in the way he had imag ined. The great conflict between good and evil ends here in a fatal draw. Billy Budd proves it: there is nothing bad that does not also bring about something good and vice versa. If someone wants something good, he must accept evil. That is why there is never a clash between good and evil, because neither of the opponents exists in this form. What has always existed, however, is permanent coexistence between the two.
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Following pages: SCENE
WILLY DECKER
I’VE SIGHTED A SAIL IN THE STORM A ship at sea has always been seen as a poetic representation of human soci eties, chained and clamped together as companions in fate against the chaos of nature. The inescapability of the situation exacerbates every aspect of coexistence, increases tension and hatred, dependence, affiliations and love. Confined in close quarters, people are inevitably at each other’s mercy, with no possibility of escape or evasion; their call for help to the outside world is in vain. The ship on the high seas thus becomes a vivid mirror image, an escalated parable of our life in general. People cannot escape each other. Imperfection and greatness, weakness and strength, all the light and all the shadows of human nature are laid bare; tightly constrained, they inevitably chafe against each other and frequently give rise to conflicts of total, desperate vehemence. Elsewhere the “ship of fools”, the “ghost ship” or the “dream ship” may exist; the Indomitable, on which the story of Billy Budd plays out, is a “ship of humanity”, a small, rocking fragment of the world, a sailing kingdom.
Just as Noah’s Ark with all its animals is a ship of peace, the Indomitable is a ship of strife, burdened with the curse of original sin – of war between people. Here war is meant and is presented in a double sense: war between nations as the broader setting of the play, and war between individuals as the immediate, true subject of the story. The two are however interdependent and inseparably interwoven as the mysterious scum of the dark side of our nature which we call “evil.” Billy Budd steps onto this ship the same fashion as a human being comes into the world: uninvited and without the option of saying no; he is forcibly recruited by a press gang. And this scaleddown representation of the earth, this warship onto which he has been cast, also has its god – the captain. With his unlimited power, he has little in common with any other leader; he has absolute power over life and death, he is infallible, neither electable nor deposable. The eyes of this god fall on Billy Budd, they see that this boy is without fault, and so the god calls him “angel.”
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I’VE SIGHTED A SAIL IN THE STORM
Between this angel and his god, a third figure now enters the terrain of the parable and expands the circle of the main characters to a tragic triangle: the armourer John Claggart, a deeply unhappy man filled with hatred and frenetic destructiveness. Just as “evil” in the form of John Claggart takes its place on the “ship of humanity”, the god captain reaches the limits of his regime, which is based on observance of extremely strict laws. Whoever breaks the laws is punished, often with death. In this strictly ordered hierarchy of worlds, with infernal cleverness John Claggart discovers the exposed Achilles heel of the god-captain and shoots his poisoned arrow at it. He bears “false witness against his neighbour“, he denouncing the innocent Billy Budd by whispering to the captain the worst of all words: “mutiny.” At this simple word, the entire mighty structure of the captain’s power trembles, the god falls from his heaven and stands as a powerless human being between two other humans who are as irreconcilable as Cain and Abel, devil and angel. A simple speech impediment prevents Billy from answering Claggart’s monstrous accusation. His helplessness turns to desperate rage and erupts into the catastrophe of the piece: Abel kills Cain, the biblical images are reversed. The god must kill Abel, and he is once again encumbered with original sin. Thus, in the focal point of the play, the mist lifts from the mystery of the depths of human nature; and just as clearly and sharply outlined, the fallen god figure of the captain, the failed keeper of order, the helpless seeker of an “eternal truth” is revealed to us. The powerlessness of the powerful is revealed in the unavoidable pressure to
kill the “innocent murderer” Billy Budd, contrary to his innermost wish. Edward Fairfax Vere now falls morally under his own laws; he must kill the innocent, sacrifice his angel and thus, as the only survivor of the fatal triangle, becomes a tragic figure of classical proportions. Thus, beneath the surface of an initially objectively told, darkly offbeat story in the English Navy during the French Wars, a parable-like human tragedy of mythological proportions occurs. On the harshly clear horizon of this hopeless image of human failure, a strange, inexplicable poetic vision now emerges: “... I’ve sighted a sail in the storm.” At the end of their lives, Billy Budd and his captain describe this vision with exactly the same words: something is sailing ahead of us, a sail in the storm, far off – she is bound for a land that is still called Utopia, where she’ll anchor forever. The key to this vision lies in a scene in the play that does not take place on the stage. The real, mysterious heart of the story of Billy Budd thus remains invisible. When the unfortunate, helpless captain pronounces the death sentence to the innocently guilty Billy, something that is perhaps unspeakable happens, which Captain Vere later vaguely describes as “... love that surpasses understanding.” An astute artifice employed by the authors was to keep this scene concealed. We learn from the captain’s last words spoken at the end of the play that Billy forgave his captain in that mysterious conversation. Once again, an image is reversed: the guilty man forgives the judge, the rejected angel forgives his god. In word or gesture, the dying Billy bows in respect to the man who kills him: by understanding the tragic
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I’VE SIGHTED A SAIL IN THE STORM
hopelessness of the situation in which the captain finds himself, Billy comes to a realisation and faces his judge in undisguised kinship – he redeems him. Thus, at the end of the play, with Billy’s cry “God save Captain Vere”, it creates the utopia of the only possible redemption from the tragic basic tension of the universe – a form of human shared love that is still utopian to us but is repeatedly exemplified in brief moments by individual people. The light of such exemplary deeds illuminates the
darkness of the imperfect, still hateful, still murdering human world like the white sail in the storm. Hence this deeply pacifist piece, which contrasts the passionate denunciation of every form of war with the exemplary behaviour of a naive, barbaric young sailor, must fade away quietly and thoughtfully into nothingness – at the end there is the calm of the captain’s last words, the silence of an unspoken question: when will our world be such that Billy Budd no longer has to die?
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MICHAEL ROIDER as CAPTAIN VERE
OLIVER LÁNG
A HIT OF EPIC BEAUTY BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S OPERAS AT THE VIENNA STATE OPERA The history of Benjamin Britten’s operas at the opera house on the Ring started at the end of the 1940s – not at the Vienna State Opera, but at the Volksoper, the temporary quarters for the destroyed opera house. Britten’s version of The Beggar’s Opera by Gay and Pepusch premièred here on 4 December 1949. The work was performed in the German translation by Hans Keller and Karl Hudez, Adolf Rott directed. The production, which ran for 15 performances, got good reviews on the whole. There were positive comments about the première cast, for example in Neues Österreich: “cast as the noble thief Macheath, Fred Liewehr sang the part (which is far from easy) well, and acted impressively. Other splendid characters were Kurt Preger’s criminal impresario Peachum and Maria Eis as his worthy spouse, as well as Walter Höfermayer’s Lockit, a corrupt jailer untroubled by any abuse of office. Macheath’s pitiable wife Polly was excellently sung by Marta Rohs, who made her every inch a ‘lady of the town’ with her refreshing naturalness
and candour. Emmy Funk gave a drastic and convincing performance as her rival Lucy, a girl who is only interesting because of her situation, but can thoroughly relate to Polly.” However, it took almost one and a half decades – until 1962 – for Britten’s actual operatic début at the Vienna State Opera. It was the director at the time, Herbert von Karajan, who first put a Britten opera in the repertoire, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, also in a German translation. Reading the première reviews, it is very clear how new Britten still was for the Vienna public of the day. Columns were written about the composer and his music; younger critics went to battle for Britten’s oeuvre. However, it is also true that there wasn’t much time between the world première of the piece in 1960 and its Vienna début at the Vienna State Opera in 1962. Karajan’s efforts on behalf of new and contemporary works are evident here. “As far as the musical side of the project is concerned, and undoubtedly due above all to Heinrich Hollreiser, it can fairly be described as successful
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A HIT OF EPIC BEAUTY
and fully up to the Viennese level, in all seriousness. The orchestra also deserves mention, it had a not particularly difficult task, and did it well.” (Franz Endler after the première in Kronen Zeitung). Opinions diverged on the production, some described Werner Düggelein’s staging as “conventional” (Endler), others disagreed, praising the exemplary handling of the characters (Heinrich Kralik in Die Presse). The overall performance of the Vienna State Opera ensemble was repeatedly praised, for example by Erik Werba in Volksblatt: “The Vienna State Opera performance successfully revived the ensemble tradition of the house. All of them are successfully seeking unity in diversity … Altogether, a genuine success – not a smash hit, but rather an example of a civilised, well-rehearsed, poetic and delightful evening at the opera.” The Neues Österreich wrote: “Gerhard Stolze mastered his difficult role perfectly, from falsetto to the bottom of the range, and his mask-like stiff act is really spookily unreal. Teresa Stich-Randall, although vocally very cool, is beautiful and stately as the elf queen Titania. The two pairs of lovers are well cast, the men are David Thaw (Lysander) and Robert Kerns (Demetrius), the women Gundula Janowitz (Helena), who clearly has a major future, and by far Margareta Sjostedt (Hermia). ... The best casting in our eyes was for the mechanicals, with Ludwig Welter (Quince), Ljubomir Pantscheff (Snug), Peter Klein (Snout), Hans Braun (Starveling) and above all the delightful and deeply comical Erich Kunz as Bottom and Ferry Gruber as Flute. Here there was real emotion, lively portrayal and realism.”
This production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream had 15 performances in all. There was a new production in 2019, this time in the original English, conducted by Simone Young and directed by Irina Brook. This was highly praised in the newspapers, for example: “Simone Young conducts the vocal ensemble commandingly and directs the Vienna State Opera orchestra with bravura. The complex structures of this chamber music score are transparently successful, with seductively shimmering colours, and the opera’s delicately capricious details.” (Kronen Zeitung). “Director Irina Brook staged the volatile action inside a dilapidated building (Noelle Ginefri-Corbel) most poetically, in the process proving that telling a fairytale set in the past can perfectly well be combined with a real present, further supported by the costumes by Magali Castellan.” (Die Furche). In between the two productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, another Britten new production – Peter Grimes – joined the Vienna State Opera repertoire in 1996. Mstislav Rostropovich had taken over as musical director for the production, and conducted the (belated) Austrian première of the piece. Neil Shicoff sang the title role, with Nancy Gustafson as Ellen. There was much applause for the music. “Rostropovich evoked Britten’s poetry, and together with the Philharmonic bathes the artfully brittle score in wonderful colours. The palette ranges from the dark moaning of the night through the magical lights of the coast to the stormtossed waves – music of loneliness and despair, the sea, the storms in the world and in the souls of people…” (Karlheinz Roschitz in Kronen Zeitung after the première). Franz Endler wrote in
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A HIT OF EPIC BEAUTY
Kurier: “On a wonderful foundation that only the Vienna State Opera can offer – the chorus and orchestra – he creates the solitary man and the sea, at least audibly. Anyone with ears could see it.” Reinhard Kager in Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote about Peter Grimes: “Neil Shicoff literally lives this contradiction on the stage. Vibrating with tension, the American tenor displays great dramatic talent in showing how a naturally gentle character can tip into gruesome brutality the next moment. Shicoff, who is the central figure of this moving evening, alongside the nearly perfectly choreographed Vienna State Opera chorus, also conveys vocally the perfectly composed ambivalence of Grimes.” Director Christine Mielitz took an approach which went beyond stage realism. “Mielitz brilliantly stages the oscillations of Britten’s waves of sound. She finds strikingly clear images beyond dull realism that are immediately absorbed by the audience.” (Wilhelm Sinkovicz in Presse) The Vienna State Opera presented the current production of Billy Budd for the first time on 12 February 2001, which was the Austrian première: of the original four-act version. This was certainly the greatest and most unanimous of all Britten successes in the history of the house, even though the audience was hesitant before the première, which – exceptionally – did not sell out. After the fêted première it quickly became
clear how effective word of mouth can be in Vienna. Within 24 hours all further performances were sold out, and as a result Billy Budd became a regular feature of the repertoire. In retrospect, the reviews show the enthusiasm the première evoked. “In this Billy Budd all the details come together in a hit of epic beauty. Director Willy Decker succeeds in creating scenes of gripping intensity and depth of emotion in Wolfgang Gussmann’s spartan black and grey ship set. Decker also peers into the abysses of the story by poet Herman Melville. He evokes the myth of the shining angel who is delivered by God to the Devil in order to redeem evil” (Karlheinz Roschitz, Kronen Zeitung) “As the jubilant audience confirmed, the Vienna State Opera delivered a perfect performance at the level that Vienna opera lovers dream of. ... The absurd took life. A masterpiece that shows nothing but misery and entrapment in misery evoked roars of rapture at the Vienna State Opera. Not that Billy Budd’s life is beautiful, but the fact that we were present at an evening of opera which was perfect in every respect.” (Franz Endler, Kurier). Wolfgang Schaufler wrote in Standard: “the evening was held together by Donald Runnicles, who repeatedly moved the talented orchestra to moments of ravishing chamber music density. It has been long since we have heard such delicate intonation and playing from the strings in particular.”
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KS NEIL SHICOFF as CAPTAIN VERE
IMPRINT BENJAMIN BRITTEN
BILLY BUDD SEASON 2024/25 PREMIÈRE OF THE PRODUCTION 12 FEBRUARY 2001 Publisher WIENER STAATSOPER GMBH, Opernring 2, 1010 Wien Director DR. BOGDAN ROŠČIĆ Music Director PHILIPPE JORDAN Administrative Director DR. PETRA BOHUSLAV General Editors SERGIO MORABITO, ANDREAS LÁNG AND OLIVER LÁNG based on the program booklet of the Vienna State Opera for the premiere of the 2001 production (concept: Oswald Panagl and Christoph Wagner-Trenkwitz) Design & concept EXEX Layout & typesetting MIWA MEUSBURGER Printed by PRINT ALLIANCE HAV PRODUKTIONS GMBH, BAD VÖSLAU TEXT & IMAGE REFERENCES The texts by Andreas Láng and Oliver Láng were original contributions for the program booklet of the 2011 revival. The texts by Oswald Panagl and Dorothea Steiner were original contributions for the 2001 program booklet. The adapted synopsis and the text by Willy Decker were taken from the program booklet Billy Budd of the Oper Köln (1992) – as in 2001. The text by Patricia Hoda is taken from her thesis Schuld und Unschuld im Opernschaffen von Benjamin Britten, Vienna 2000. IMAGE REFERENCES Cover image: Doughnut on stick on black background. © Peter Dazeley / GettyImages / Cover image concept: Martin Conrads, Berlin. Performance photos: Axel Zeininger / Wiener Staatsoper GmbH (p 2-3, 10-11, 14, 21, 33, 37), Michael Pöhn / Wiener Staatsoper GmbH (p. 7, 28-29). ENGLISH TRANSLATION Andrew Smith. Reproduction only with approval of Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Dramaturgy. Holders of rights who were unavailable regarding retrospect compensation are requested to make contact.
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