Review of Opera North's Billy Budd

(This review is based on the opening night at Leeds Grand Theatre)

Billy Budd is widely considered one if Britten’s greatest operas. Written in 1951, with a libretto by E M Forster and Eric Crozier based on Herman Melville, it had pretty well all the firepower of the British arts establishment behind it when it launched, as a follow-up to Peter Grimes, the sea-faring story that made Britten’s operatic reputation just after the war.

This time we’re on board a British warship in the Napoleonic era, guarding the seas against the French. Billy is a young able seaman who is ‘impressed’ – ie signed on against his will. His nemesis is the evil master-at-arms, John Claggart, and the captain caught in a desperate moral dilemma is Edward Vere.

Claggart falsely accuses Billy of fomenting mutinous talk, and when Billy (who has a recurring stammer) can’t speak but hits him in reply, his fate is sealed by court martial – hanging from the yardarm.

Vere’s decision to order Billy’s death, in accordance with King’s Regulations, though he is manifestly a good and noble lad, is at the heart of the opera. It’s about good and evil personified, and the place of law when they clash. Above all, it’s about Captain Vere, the original Peter Pears role, here played by the masterly Alan Oke. I thought he was really excellent, portraying a man genuinely (literally?) caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and singing with distinction throughout.

There has always been a focus on a sub-text of homosexuality perceived in this piece: it has an all-male cast, a title-protagonist who is meant to be physically as well as morally admirable, and of course Melville, Forster and Britten were all gay. Its date, however, ensured that such matters were left to a spectator’s imagination and could be disregarded altogether – and director Orpha Phelan seems to have followed that sensible principle.

(More to the point in today’s world might be the fact that the piece reflected an artistic environment where women played hardly any part anyway … how much do we want to endorse that?)

Roderick Williams (Billy) and Alastair Miles (Claggart) were both in excellent voice, but had the unenviable tasks of appearing totally noble and totally evil, respectively. The former was as good as anyone might hope: the latter even (on first night) picked up a few pantomime-style boos!

There is a magnificent augmented chorus, and one smaller role that stood out was Stephen Richardson as Dansker, the older, good-guy crew member.

What remains most clearly in the mind from this production is the skillfully contrived set, the realistic costuming (both by Leslie Travers) and the energy and clarity with which the story is told.

And there’s a great coup de theatre at the beginning of Act Two, where the ship prepares for action against a ‘Frenchie’. With the full cast on stage and eager for battle, a magnificent orchestral backdrop and two huge guns lowered over the stage and tilted to point at the audience before ‘firing’, the effect is genuinely scary.

Be prepared for loud bangs, we were warned as we entered the auditorium, and it was an accurate prediction: wisps of fire-cracker ash hung in the air for minutes afterwards.