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Peter Mattei (Billy Budd) foto: MATS BÄCKER

ORIGINS

The idea had been conceived much earlier, during Britten’s years in the USA at the start of the Second World War. Herman Melville‘s novel Billy Budd had been finished in 1891, shortly before the death of the author, and was first published in 1924 (today Melville is best known for Moby Dick, yet another novel set onboard a ship). The English author, E.M. Forster, a full generation older than Britten, got Britten interested, having already become acquainted with the novel in the USA
. However, as a novelist, Forster maintained that he was not used to writing for the stage and another librettist, Eric Crozier, was engaged. The three men sketched out an opera in four acts with all of the roles for men only, since the action played out onboard a ship called The Indomitable.

THE LIBRETTO

The libretto follows the Melville book fairly faithfully. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Britain is at war with France and the young, unspoilt Billy Budd is recruited into the warship’s crew. He is loved by everyone, and really has only one fault: he stammers. Despite the title role for a young baritone, the story’s narrator is the ship’s commander, Captain Vere, written for Britten’s life partner, tenor Peter Pears. Just like his antithesis, the malevolent bass role John Claggart, he is fascinated, even attracted by Billy. Claggart cannot endure his own attraction to the young man and decides to destroy Billy. He accuses him of mutiny, and Billy is unable to defend himself due to his stammer. Instead he knocks Claggart down with a blow that turns out to be fatal. Captain Vere is forced against his own personal convictions to sentence Billy to death. The end of the novel has Vere dying during a sea battle shortly afterwards, with Billy’s name on his lips. It is also indicated that the “attraction” was due to Vere being the foundling Billy’s real father. However, the opera ends with an epilogue, in which, many years later, Vere still blames himself for Billy’s death.

Foto: MATS BÄCKER

THE MUSIC

For this, Britten wrote his very finest and most striking music, in which the sea is present in every bar, just as it is in Peter Grimes. The principal roles and the many secondary roles are strongly characterised. The great orchestral movement can swell from individual solo instruments, as in Billy’s touching final aria, to enormous choral scenes with complex ensembles, as in the scene in which the battle against the French lets loose – in the latter, Britten’s strong pacifist tendency also emerges.

PRODUCTIONS

Despite reasonable success at its premiere, the work didn’t gain popularity quickly. Britten revised the work before a TV production some years later. Four acts became two, as he had composed a number of additional intermezzos for scene changes, and he also removed a scene from the first act in which Captain Vere instructs his crew. This film recording is now available on DVD, in which viewers can enjoy seeing Pears play Vere. On stage, this new version had its premiere at Covent Garden in 1964, with none other than Georg Solti conducting. Some years later, Britten himself conducted Billy Budd during a recording for Decca, on that occasion also with Pears and with baritone Peter Glossop in the title role. Even today, this recording still acts as a virtually inimitable reference piece. In Germany, the work was staged in locations that included Hamburg in 1972, with Sweden’s Harald Ek playing Vere.

Mathias Zachariassen (Vere), Mats Persson (Redburn), Anders Lorentzson (Flint), Marco Stella (Ratcliffe). Foto: MATS BÄCKER

Although it is now staged throughout the world, it was 2001 before it had its Scandinavian premiere, when it was staged in Copenhagen in the old opera house with Bo Skovhus playing Billy. The Göteborg Opera production will be the first time this opera has been staged in Sweden, if you discount an abridged version for piano performed in Swedish prisons in the early 1990s. Our production comes from Frankfurt, with director Richard Jones, having moved the action from onboard a ship to an English boarding school with a naval background. It became an unprecedented success there in 2007, and has been reprised in Frankfurt several times, in addition to having been staged in Amsterdam. Our production also has major Swedish singing star, Peter Mattei, playing the title role, just as he did when this version was first staged in Frankfurt.

Göran Gademan
Dramaturgist