In these days, when an opera written other than to a specific
commission may have to wait years for a first performance, it
is amazing to realise that Billy Budd – originally
destined for the Edinburgh Festival – was first staged at Covent
Garden within a month of the completion of the full score. Under
the circumstances, and given the clearly limited amount of time
available for rehearsal, it is also amazing that the performance
- which can be heard on a pirate issue of that first performance
now available from VAI - was so confident and assured under
the composer’s baton. It is also not surprising that Britten
subsequently felt the need to revise the score, deleting the
Captain’s ‘muster scene’ at the end of the original Act One
- which oddly enough he had specifically requested from his
librettist E.M. Forster - and making some minor adjustments
elsewhere. That revised version formed the basis for Britten’s
own 1968 Decca recording and for a BBC television production
conducted by Charles Mackerras which has recently resurfaced
on DVD.
The ‘muster scene’ has subsequently been reinstated in some
recordings such as those by Kent Nagano for Virgin and Donald
Runnicles for Orfeo. One must nevertheless feel that Britten
was right to cut it and to link the original First Act to the
Second – Ernest Newman infamously complained that the scene
reminded him irresistibly of Pinafore. The reason usually
cited for the deletion was that the heroic nature of the scene
no longer suited the voice of Peter Pears, who inevitably sang
the role of Captain Vere in the BBC telecast and Decca recording.
The participation of Pears had other disadvantages too. Vere
is seen as an old man in the Prologue and Epilogue, narrating
the incidents which form the main action of the plot. In the
hands of Pears, some fifteen years after the première, Vere
sounds implausibly aged throughout, and certainly older than
a naval captain would conceivably have been during the era of
the French Revolutionary Wars. He was also clearly not in his
best voice at the time of the audio recording, and the infirmities
of his portrayal are sometimes painfully evident, most notably
in his laboured delivery of phrases like “the angel of God has
struck”. In this new recording, taken from live performances
at the Glyndebourne Festival, there are no such concerns. John
Mark Ainsley sounds properly young and relatively inexperienced
- the sort of man who might find himself propelled into taking
decisions that a more seasoned captain might have been able
to resist. He sings with great assurance and dedication, yielding
nothing to Pears in his expression of anguish, misery and ultimate
redemption.
By his side we are given a predominantly young cast, who also
fit more easily into the roles of young seamen than Britten’s
more experienced and seasoned crew. In the title role Jacques
Imbrailo is quite simply superlative. He has a lighter, almost
tenorish, voice which portrays the handsome young foretopman
more convincingly than Britten’s weightier and rougher Peter
Glossop. Although at times he yields points to Glossop in sheer
force of delivery, he rises well to his extended Billie
in the Darbies ballad in the final Act. Indeed he sounds
younger than Thomas Allen, whose Billy Budd for the Welsh National
Opera was one of the great operatic experiences of my life,
but who was considerably older by the time he came to record
it for video with English National Opera. Britten in 1968 had
a cast of sailors and officers many of whom were indeed very
young at the time, and the combination of Robert Tear and Benjamin
Luxon in the scene following the flogging of the Novice is beautifully
poised in his hands – more so than here where Sir Mark Elder
fails to achieve the same sense of loss and consolation (CD
2, track 2). Britten also had the advantage of Owen Brannigan
as the old seaman Dansker, whose forceful delivery during the
duet that closes the new Act One has more sense of imminent
danger than we get here with Jeremy White. Otherwise the honours
are very evenly matched.
For the three officers Britten in 1968 had John Shirley-Quirk,
Bryan Drake and David Kelly, all Aldeburgh Festival regulars
who worked with Britten over a considerable number of years.
It has to be said that Shirley-Quirk has rather too noble and
sympathetic a voice for the basically obtuse and xenophobic
Redburn, but Drake is properly rather nasty as Flint. Iain Patterson
is more characterful here, although Matthew Rose as Flint is
somewhat curiously given star billing on the cover of the box,
which seems rather unfair on his fellow-officers. One must not
fail to mention the superb Glyndebourne chorus, who produce
a really hair-raising effect as they come into view singing
their shanties at the beginning of the final scene of Act One;
here they knock spots off Britten’s comparatively tame Ambrosian
Singers (CD2, track 11). The orchestra too is superb, and under
the baton of Sir Mark Elder they produce sound that is streets
ahead of the sometimes tentative playing on the Britten set;
better balanced too. Elder takes the notorious passage of 34
common chords which links into the Billy in the Darbies
scene slightly slower than Britten, to the considerable advantage
of the atmosphere, and his players deliver better nuanced sounds
as well (CD 3, track 13).
The real problem with this new set comes with the casting of
Phillip Ens as Claggart. From the first performance this is
a role that has always been cast with black basses of the Wagnerian
stamp, from Frederick Dahlberg in 1951 through Michael Langdon,
Forbes Robinson and Richard van Allan, all of whom brought a
sense of permeating and corrupting evil to the part; Robinson
the best of all, as can be heard on his recording of the monologue
conducted by Solti on a long-deleted Covent Garden LP. Ens’s
voice is basically just too light and baritonal, and, more seriously,
lacks the sense of sheer power that enables Claggart to dominate
not only the men below decks but also to put the fear of God
into the officers. It appears from reviews of the original stage
production that Ens was highly impressive dramatically, but
in purely audio terms this Claggart simply sounds almost too
sympathetic. He also seems unable clearly to define the frequent
semi-tonal shifts that form an essential part of Claggart’s
music – such as in the line “Let him crawl” (CD 2, end of track
1) – and indeed constitute one of Claggart’s principal leitmotifs.
Time and again these phrases are rounded off unclearly, almost
apologetically in a manner that recalls Eric Halfvarson who
similarly smudged his lines in both the Nagano and Runnicles
recordings. In the final analysis, this is a role that has more
recently been undertaken by Wotans such as James Morris and
John Tomlinson, and Ens simply lacks the vocal heft to match
such competition.
The CDs come packaged in a handsome hardback book complete with
the complete text and a long and informative essay by Philip
Reed. Only the synopsis is given in translation here, into French
and German.
The length of the new Act One means that a suitable point for
a break has to be found, and like all other recordings this
one follows Britten’s arrangement with the change of disc corresponding
with the end of the first LP side. Oddly enough only Kent Nagano,
using the longer four-Act version, manages to get the whole
of the first two Acts onto one CD. Making the break just before
Claggart’s I heard, your honour, makes for a very short
first disc, and only the Decca reissue of the Britten recording
provides a fill-up in the shape of two song-cycles. Mind you,
Elder’s slower speeds make for a very lengthy third CD which
pushes at the very limits of the technology.
In this review I have concentrated on comparisons with Britten’s
own 1968 studio recording. This remains the historical touchstone
by which all subsequent issues must necessarily be judged. There
have been a considerable number of new issues since then, including
excellent performances conducted by Richard Hickox and Daniel
Harding. Both of these latter were studio or concert recordings,
and the absence of stage noises and the very occasional infelicities
of balance which are found in this Glyndebourne live performance
must tell in their favour. In a recent BBC Building a Library
feature Piers Burton-Page selected Hickox’s Chandos issue (with
three superb leading soloists) as the best modern recording
currently available. Despite the many virtues of this new set
that verdict may safely stand. For those who want a souvenir
of the Glyndebourne production the DVD version, with the advantage
of Ens’s stage presence to offset his vocal performance, will
surely be the preferred option. Indeed, given the dated black-and-white
picture and gritty sound of the Mackerras BBC version and the
decidedly unatmospheric ENO production under David Atherton
- where the orchestra also sounds rather backward - it will
certainly be the best representation in that format.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
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London Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Mark Elder