BaL 26.01.13 - Britten's Billy Budd

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Looking forward to this.

[JimD]

So what are the odds on the Britten/Pears/Glossop version in the boxed set? Surely a Frankel-like price? (Only teasing.)

[BBMmk2]

I am awaiting with abaited breath for the outcome!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Hickox. I didn't expect that.

[BBMmk2]

Hickox. I didn't expect that.

That was a surprise! I will have to listen to this again

[Mary Chambers]

I did listen to this, but I don't much care which version is chosen. I have Britten's recording and 3 DVD versions. The 1966 performance on TV is worth it for Pears's Vere, but I'm not keen on the casting of Billy - looks wrong, though sings well.

As I've often said - I don't think anyone agrees with me! - recordings aren't very important to me except as historical documents, and initially a way of learning the piece. I don't want to listen to them repeatedly, because the performance is always the same. So I get to know the work, ideally with the score as well as recordings, keep it in my head and see as many live performances as I can get to. I am very grateful to the recording industry, though, for all those authentic Britten performances, especially the ones with Pears (that's most of them).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

That makes sense, and we must never let the multitude of recording deflect us from live performances. And yes, we are fortunate to have so many recordings with Peter Pearsn though sadly not Peter Pears. I wiped my off-air recording of the 1976 revival with Pears as soon as the first commercial CDs were issued.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

An excellent BaL, I thought: PB-P talked about the work and the selection of the chosen one arose almost incidentally out of this. I was surprised at the choice of Hickox, not because PB-P hadn't prepared me for his choice, but because Hickox isn't a conductor I've much regarded before. In this case, I think he got everything exactly right, and with a superb cast. I was also taken with the Nagano, so two to supplement the Britten studio recording.

[Mandryka]

An excellent BaL, I thought: PB-P talked about the work and the selection of the chosen one arose almost incidentally out of this. I was surprised at the choice of Hickox, not because PB-P hadn't prepared me for his choice, but because Hickox isn't a conductor I've much regarded before. In this case, I think he got everything exactly right, and with a superb cast. I was also taken with the Nagano, so two to supplement the Britten studio recording.

Hickox is the version I have (I also have the Pears/Britten/Culshaw version on my ipod). The Chando set was recorded immediately after a run of performances at the Barbican in the late winter of 1999. I saw one of these, never having heard the work before and was mightily impressed - more impressed, actually, than I was with the subsequent recording. Langridge/Keenlyside/Tomlinson really were a dream team and the supporting cast featured singers like Mark Padmore in minor roles.

BB is my favourite BB opera (I'd argue that it is one of the most pessimistic works of art ever created). HIckos had a great affinity for the score, as he did for every score I heard him conduct.

[Nick Armstrong]

Hickox. I didn't expect that.

I did. It's a great set. I pulled it from the shelf after this thread started... along with the Nagano, in which it's good to see the extra 'Vere' bits referred to by PBP.

Listened to his survey this morning, exemplary BAL I thought - deft introduction to the arch of the story (but with musical illustrations, unlike Ms Duchen's very long, unillustrated 'first paragraph' last week). Possibly because I agreed with everything he said!

Particularly interesting that from the 2010 Glyndebourne show, he selected only the 'Billy in prison' monologue (which I mentioned above was the high point of the production) - although the singer's rather shaky voice was rather cruelly exposed. Interesting there was no mention of John Mark Ainsley's underpowered and unconvincing Vere.

Also intriguing was PBP's analysis of Claggart's character - often a real problem in productions, as it's so easy for him to be just a panto villain. PBP thinking that Billy's virtue was like a mirror to Claggart's evil, and hence has to be smashed, is ok in general terms. The most convincing interpretation I saw was at the ENO in 2005 - same Billy and Claggart as the Hickox set (but sadly no Langridge as Vere)... at that time, I was doing some reviewing for an online arts website (fear not IGI - I gave up when I went off opera!)... With trepidation given the subject matter, and for what it's worth, here are the paras I wrote about Claggart:


"A potential problem with "Billy Budd" is that Claggart can come across as a two dimensional villain, irrationally ill-disposed to Billy. It is a key success of this production that this danger is largely avoided.

John Tomlinson magnificently projects a sense of dark violence without melodrama, vocally hair-raising and physically colossal, bleached face, staring eyes, stiff movements. One believes his self-analysis in his monologue towards the end of Act I. He describes that his response to the "depravity to which [he] was born"
was to construct his own "dark world", but that Billy's "light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it and suffers".

It is pretty explicit in this production that Claggart's "depravity" is homosexuality, which he has buried behind walls of defensive cruelty and discipline. Billy's unique qualities ("O beauty, handsomeness, goodness!"), and Claggart's instant response to them, threaten to be too strong for those defences to withstand. But it is Claggart's repression which is too strong, he cannot bear for those defences to crumble, and he must therefore destroy the threat. This Claggart's villainy is not two-dimensional - it has convincing psychological weight.

A classic dramatic device is used to convey this, and to suggest the strength of Vere's response to Billy and his story too. The elderly Vere is discovered in the very opening scene twisting a piece of red material in his hands - some moments later, when we've gone back in time to the events of the opera itself, we realise what that red material is: it's Billy's necktie when he first comes aboard the Indomitable, the only splash of bright colour in the predominantly grey-blue-black design of the production.

Claggart then orders Billy to take off this non-regulation neckerchief - which we see next during Claggart's monologue (referred to above) when he draws it from within his jacket. He has been keeping it next to his heart - the most potent visual sign of the extent to which Billy is in the process of breaching the Claggart defences."

[pastoralguy]

PBP of " Ida Haendel did not even make the programme for Britten's Violin Concerto" infamy

And he STILL didn't mention
Ida Haendel - just a bunch of singers...!

[Barbirollians]

Hickox was a great Britten conductor . His Peter Grimes with Langridge is magnificent .

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Hickox was a great Britten conductor . His Peter Grimes with Langridge is magnificent .

I agree, but I was very disappointed by his Noye's Fludde.

[Sir Velo]

I can only echo the sentiments of others. This was an exemplary BAL, drawing attention to the key moments of the opera, and effectively illustrating the reviewer's points with the chosen extracts, even if I still believe the composer's recording is hors concours; moreover, it still sounds marvellous to these ears! Returning to the BAL, one can only hope that prospective reviewers are exhorted to hear this as a model for future broadcasts.

Incidentally, isn't it about time the forum had a "like" button for posts with which we agree, instead of the endless parroting of "I agree with x" or the rather juvenile emoticon?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"A potential problem with "Billy Budd" is that Claggart can come across as a two dimensional villain, irrationally ill-disposed to Billy. It is a key success of this production that this danger is largely avoided.

John Tomlinson magnificently projects a sense of dark violence without melodrama, vocally hair-raising and physically colossal, bleached face, staring eyes, stiff movements. One believes his self-analysis in his monologue towards the end of Act I. He describes that his response to the "depravity to which [he] was born"
was to construct his own "dark world", but that Billy's "light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it and suffers".

It is pretty explicit in this production that Claggart's "depravity" is homosexuality, which he has buried behind walls of defensive cruelty and discipline. Billy's unique qualities ("O beauty, handsomeness, goodness!"), and Claggart's instant response to them, threaten to be too strong for those defences to withstand. But it is Claggart's repression which is too strong, he cannot bear for those defences to crumble, and he must therefore destroy the threat. This Claggart's villainy is not two-dimensional - it has convincing psychological weight.

A classic dramatic device is used to convey this, and to suggest the strength of Vere's response to Billy and his story too. The elderly Vere is discovered in the very opening scene twisting a piece of red material in his hands - some moments later, when we've gone back in time to the events of the opera itself, we realise what that red material is: it's Billy's necktie when he first comes aboard the Indomitable, the only splash of bright colour in the predominantly grey-blue-black design of the production.

Claggart then orders Billy to take off this non-regulation neckerchief - which we see next during Claggart's monologue (referred to above) when he draws it from within his jacket. He has been keeping it next to his heart - the most potent visual sign of the extent to which Billy is in the process of breaching the Claggart defences."

Good stuff, Cali: many thanks! (and I don't care if these are - or I am - juvenile! )