Opera · Opera in English

Billy Budd

1 December 1951, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London

Benjamin Britten · libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, after Herman Melville

On a British man-of-war in 1797, a young, beautiful and universally loved foretopman is destroyed by the malice of the master-at-arms and by the captain who knows he is innocent and hangs him anyway. Britten's only opera with an entirely male cast frames the action as the old captain's memory, and turns on a stammer, a false accusation, and a blow that kills.

How to spot them

▸An all-male cast — no women's voices at all
▸A British warship in 1797, the summer after the Spithead and Nore mutinies, with a French ship sighted in the mist
▸A prologue and epilogue in which an old man remembers and cannot forgive himself
▸A handsome sailor with a stammer, an evil master-at-arms, and a captain nicknamed 'Starry'
▸Thirty-four slow chords for full orchestra stand in for the scene nobody sees

Arias & moments — listen

"I am an old man who has experienced much" — a captain in retirement broods on a summer long ago (1951)

The Prologue for Captain Vere, returned to at the end as the Epilogue

"Farewell to you, old Rights o' Man!" — a pressed sailor cheerfully salutes the merchantman he has left (1951)

His farewell is misheard as mutinous talk — the ship he came from was called the Rights o' Man

"O beauty, o handsomeness, goodness!" — a master-at-arms resolves to destroy the thing he cannot bear to see (1951)

Claggart's Act 1 monologue, the opera's credo of motiveless malignity

Thirty-four unaccompanied chords for orchestra cover an unseen interview in a cabin (1951)

The 'interview chords' — Melville leaves the scene untold, and Britten answers with chords alone

"Don't like the French" and "This is our moment" — a crew scents action and is cheated of it by fog (1951)

The chase scene; the mist closes in and the guns fall silent, and Claggart makes his accusation

"Look! Through the port comes the moonshine astray" — a sailor in irons waits for dawn and the yardarm (1951)

'Billy in the Darbies', taken almost intact from Melville's closing ballad

"Starry Vere, God bless you!" — a condemned man blesses the captain who sentenced him, and the crew mutters (1951)

The execution; the crew's wordless, threatening rumble that follows is quelled by the officers

Quick-fire facts

•The librettists were the novelist E. M. Forster — his only opera libretto — and Eric Crozier; the source is Melville's novella, left unfinished at his death in 1891 and not published until 1924.
•The premiere at Covent Garden on 1 December 1951 was conducted by Britten himself, after Josef Krips withdrew; Peter Pears sang Captain Vere and Theodor Uppman created Billy.
•It was written for the Festival of Britain year and commissioned by the Arts Council.
•Britten revised the original four acts into two in 1960; the revision was broadcast by the BBC that November and first staged at Covent Garden in 1964.
•The ship is HMS Indomitable; in Melville it is the Bellipotent (earlier drafts, the Indomitable).
•Captain Edward Fairfax Vere is nicknamed 'Starry Vere', from Marvell's line about 'the discipline severe of Fairfax and the starry Vere'.
•The master-at-arms is John Claggart, a bass; other roles include the old sailor Dansker, Mr Redburn, Mr Flint and the Novice.
•The opera opens and closes in B flat major and B minor, the ambiguity between the two often read as Vere's unresolved guilt.
•Melville's story has also been set as a 1962 film directed by and starring Peter Ustinov, with Terence Stamp as Billy.

Drill it — 10 cards

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Sources

Britten Pears Arts — Billy Budd
Encyclopaedia Britannica — Billy Budd: opera by Britten
Humphrey Carpenter — Benjamin Britten: A Biography