|
|
|
|
|
Billy Budd
Opera North,
Theatre Royal, Nottingham
***** Billy Budd
was Benjamin Britten’s second full-scale opera.
The Rape of Lucretia
and Albert Herring,
both presented by the
composer’s own smaller scale English Opera Group, and staged at
Glyndebourne, were designed for compacter forces. Paul Bunyan
was conceived, with W. H. Auden, as a (classy)
Musical. But Covent Garden commissioned
Budd, and
this required presentation and orchestration on a much fuller scale,
closer to Gloriana,
its successor, which followed in Coronation year, 1953. Opera North, just
completing a week at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, has had a run of
meaty successes of late (their current
Der Rosenkavalier is one), cementing
the name of a company that also enjoyed glory days in the 1990s; and
this, without a shadow of doubt, was a five star production. It calls
for a male chorus of some 30 or so – the crew of the ship
Indomitable,
and a replete array of officers and ship’s boys or midshipmen and – you
name it. How to marshal all
these around a stage? Irish director Orpha Phelan and her Designer,
Leslie Travers (the two worked together on Opera North’s Bellini opera,
I Capuleti e I Montecchi;
he has overseen half a dozen of their recent productions including the
celebrated The Fortunes of King Croesus),
produced a superlative answer. A curving gangway, almost full stage width, led
the way
A wealth of stone, or stone-coloured panelled
walls provided an amazingly strong neutral backdrops. And the way Phelan
moved and blocked the whole cast, subtly, relevantly, slyly, was
patently a masterpiece of the director’s art from start to finish.
Add to that the calibre of the singing – E. M.
Forster and Eric Crozier’s superbly finessed, cunningly filleted
libretto demands a mass of small, medium and lead roles – was virtually
impossible to fault. The pair introduce a lot of naval terms into the
text – ‘Man the braces!’; ‘Beat the quarters’; ‘set royals and sky-rakers’
(the sails). And while it is not essential to capture everything, the
words as a whole benefit immensely by being crystal clear. And so they
were. The enunciation of principals and chorus alike was immensely
rewarding. We have to understand the context of how Claggart,
the Master-at-Arms, comes to make the young – and innocent - Billy Budd
seem a dangerous threat: 1797, the year it was set by Melville, is the
very year in which a flurry of very serious navy mutinies occurred – at
a time when the war with France was still in its early days, and far
from predictable. The Spithead mutiny (April-May) and the – in the
naval senior command’s eyes - far more serious coincident Nore mutiny (a
sandbank on the Thames off Sheerness and Shoeburyness) could have spelt
disaster for the navy. In the former, an accommodation was found and
pardons issued. In the latter, numerous perpetrators or participants
were hanged, or imprisoned or exiled to the colonies. Rough Justice. But
it was not a time when risks could be taken. The opera started on a
strong note, for Alan Oke – once long ago a baritone but now a tenor
with a beautifully honed high range, made a superb impression. Captain
Vere – who in the end fails to prevent, even promotes, Billy’s
execution, is a part written (for Peter Pears) quite high in the range,
and Oke, far from sounding like an ‘old man’, sang both his opening
prelude and Vere’s final envoi
with a strength that belied the idea of a broken man. Despite his words ‘I could have saved him’, you
got the feeling that here, in his snug 1820s – Metternich or Duke of
Wellington-era long camel coat, was a man who accepted the outcome which
he, in the trial scene, effectively dodged. A man who had lived by the
King’s rules, and who accepted the anomaly and distressing outcome that
they necessitated. He can admit ‘I’ve seen many men in my time, and
I trust him (Billy) . . . I have studied men and their ways . . .
Claggart, John Claggart! Beware! I’m not so easily deceived’ but he can
still fail to act, almost immobiloised, when remedial action is needed
and leadership demanded. Yet when on deck, Vere’s stance was strikingly
yielding: relaxed, unthreatening, and certainly not self-satisfied. This
was skilful: the contrast with the fairly chipper senior
A word here about the
orchestra. Billy Budd
needs an especially firm hand to keep all the many leads together – not
least in the battle scene launching Act 2– and to lend assurance in a
score which is demanding for all, not least the chorus. Oliver Rundell,
Opera North’s brand new chorus master, doubtless did a vast amount of
work with his sailor charges. Thus they came prepared. But Garry
Walker’s conducting (his first for this company), and his lucid leads
especially, were quite remarkably managed, with scarcely a single intro
not given to the singers, while keeping the orchestra in tow with his
right hand, with the result that one sensed absolute confidence in cast
and all sections or departments. The score is riveting to the ear. Britten makes a
lot of use of double basses, indeed of all low instruments (trombones,
tuba, low bassoon) to make his effects. There is scope for this to
become marginally a muddle, or at least, not to speak clear. This never
happened. The string sound was marvellous, from the first lulling bars
at the start which suggest memory or reverie and open the door to Vere’s
reflections. Reliable strings are crucial, as in any opera, but here one
just as often sensed them subliminally: overpowering of course in the
battle, and rising at several points to unnervingly forceful
declamation, but often strikingly effective when kept down and almost
suggested. A sure feat of discipline. Several parts made their mark early on. Not just
tenor Oliver Johnston’s stripe-backed, flogged Novice, who will in the
later stages become Claggart’s tool and hasten Billy’s downfall; but
also his young friend and support (Gavan Ring), who shone vocally and
visually at every turn. When a cutter comes alongside with three
impressed men, including Billy, it was cheering to hear another
wonderful tenor, Daniel Norman, singing Red Whisker (Joseph Higgins,
from Bristol, before the navy stole him); and Arthur Jones, a weaver
from Spitalfields (Tim Ochala-Greenough). Norman’s role seemed oddly
brief; one wondered if he was also an (extremely desirable) understudy.
The put-upon Squeak (David Llewellyn) made a nice job of being the
natural on-board victim. Stephen Richardson’s Dansker showed a wisdom
and calm that shone especially when he breaks rules and comforts Billy
imprisoned in the hold. His Scandinavian beard was rather a showpiece. Billy, sung by that exquisite baritone Roderick
Williams, thanks to the performer’s wide-eyed excitement and sheer
cheerfulness, was a delight. True, Williams is arguably old, or oldish,
for this role, but his sheer personality shone out. Billy is, to my
mind, not sufficiently used in Act I, a possible drawback in the
libretto. And though he is cocky at the start, his self-confidence was
possibly slightly overdone. Billy’s great moment is
in his aria in scene three near the end, sung when in prison awaiting
his end: ‘Look! Through the port comes the moon-shine astray’, which was
sung with all the aery beauty with which Britten endows presumably the
most significant pure aria in the opera – like an extract from his
Nocturne.
Thanks to Thomas C. Hase’s lighting, which picked
out everything with extraordi
Right from the start, when we find the chorus
scrubbing the decks under the severe watchful eyes of switch-wielding
middle-rankers, one was impressed by the atmosphere the chorus
generated.
The way they were got off stage – skilfully – on
each occasion was almost as striking. Their acting standards were
phenomenally high, whether emerging from their huddles below – every
character an individual, and with no lightweight interaction but
well-rehearsed interchanges - or simply placed mid- to rearstage as a
kind of backdrop to two or three-man officer scenes, to avert any danger
of vast bare space behind. Quite brilliant. The quasi-procession on the return of the flogged
novice was another of Orpen’s splendidly conceived sequences. One sea
shanty was quite riveting. But the choir’s big moment comes in a massive
chorus, or rather series of choruses, as the ship engages the French.
The singing, and the commitment, was stupendous. There aren’t many comic
moments in Billy Budd,
but one of them is when Vere invites two fellow officers – Flint and
Redburn – to join him for a drink. Their deference to him (Do we sit? Do
we stand?) was fun, and their later toasts ‘Don’t like the French, their
bowing and scraping, their hoppetty-skippety ways, their lingo’
beautifully lucid and witty. Clarke’s Flint was as good as ever in this
threesome, but we also here first encountered Mr. Redburn (First
Lieutenant), sung by that hugely experienced singer Peter Savidge.
He would later shine as Chairman of the
ill-fated, hesitating three-man court martial which sentenced Billy to
death. And the pairing by Britten of two baritones made their jaunty
interplay all the more amusing – all sung with pinpoint timing. The
officers’ natty dress looked straight out of Gainsborough: Travers’
mixture of white and blue costumes (plus the odd scarlet grenadier)
worked wonders throughout: often you felt Phelan’s blocks were directly
related to the effective placement and spacing of the blue costumes
onstage. As for the writing desk and chairs and other
paraphernalia, brought on and removed by five or half a dozen lively and
vocally pleasing boy Midshipmen (doubling as powder monkeys in the
battle scene): they had a vast amount to do, and carried it off with
remarkable assurance and aplomb. Someone had rehearsed them to
perfection: the orderliness on board HMS Indomitable owed much to their
promptness and stylish efficiency. It would be impossible not to hand the palm,
along with Oke’s pensive Vere, to Alistair Miles’s dramatically well
judged, late-introduced Claggart (‘A veritable Argos. He has a hundred
eyes.’). He has wide experience of playing grim and nasty characters,
but his range and the roles he essays to such perfection are vast, and
he has depicted every kind of nobleman and villain in virtually all the
world’s major houses. One can see why here. The voice is as withering as the grim upright,
stately, almost regal, threatening stance. Every time Miles moved, or
simply stood, or slithered up the walkway at a dignified lope to officer
level, one simply shivered. The way he imparted evil was awe-inspiring; not
least in his maternal nursing of Billy’s confiscated red neckerchief.
And the tension of the soliloquy where he addresses his own culpability,
and decides that there is no alternative to vileness and revenge. ‘O
beauty, o handsomeness, goodness . . . having seen you, what choice
remains to me?’ and finally on his knees, ‘I have you in my power and I
would destroy you’. It seems a kind of Aschenbach, and just as
articulate, in reverse. But it is the detail in the music that makes all
this intense drama possible. Trombones summoned up for Mr. Flint’s
telling early aria. The use of flute – key mellifluous solo instrument –
as well as like a fife: no exaggeration, nothing overdone. Contrasted
interludes – clarinet, low strings and harp; a later one with flute
replacing clarinet. Sneering syncopated horns making Claggart’s approach
to Vere the slimier; an especially telling intermezzo, this time with
trumpet and pizzicato double bass and xylophone. What sounded like a
viola solo consequential upon the Master-at-Arms’s long-awaited demise;
angry cellos and tuba uniting as the trial launched, and wan solo harp
as the court rises. A sadly supportive solo clarinet for Billy and
Dansker during the former’s last moments. The most amazing
interlude of all is a long, adagissimo
sequence of (I believe) 34 chords which come close harmonically, one
almost dare say, to Strauss’s Four Last
Songs, written a couple of years
earlier. The whole momentum of the music is dramatically - and
incredibly daringly – paused. It’s as if there has been some kind of
seismic shift between the prevalence of good and the threat of evil. Or,
if one believes in redemption, perhaps the opposite. Roderic Dunnett 17-11-16
|
|
|
|
officers
- Adrian Clarke’s Mr. Flint (Sailing Master) or Callum Thorpe’s
Lieutenant Ratcliffe, magnificent in lower registers - was marked. Above
all, it provided a perfect riposte to the amazingly controlled, ominous
strut of Alistair Miles’s cruel and obnoxious Claggart, who describes
Billy as ‘dangerous’ but is in fact himself, with his spies and
machinations, the most dangerous man on the ship. A threat to sanity,
who – in one of his stupendous arias – reveals that he is conscious of
the evil in himself, and thanks to it has lived a kind of ‘Hell’.