Benjamin BRITTEN (1913-1976)
Billy Budd (1951, revised 1960) [164.06]
John Mark Ainsley (tenor) - Captain Vere; Jacques Imbrailo (baritone) - Billy
Budd; Phillip Ens (bass) - Claggart; Jeremy White (bass) - Dansker; Iain Paterson
(bass-baritone) - Redburn; Matthew Rose (bass) - Flint; Darren Jeffrey (bass-baritone)
- Ratcliffe; Ben Johnson (tenor) - Novice; John Moore (baritone) - Donald;
Alasdair Elliott (tenor) - Red Whiskers; Peter Gijsbertsen (tenor) - Maintop;
Richard Mosley-Evans (baritone) - Bosun; Colin Judson (tenor) - Squeak; Duncan
Rock (baritone) - Novice’s friend; Michael Wallace (baritone) - First Mate;
John-Owen Miley-Read (bass) - Second Mate; Toby Girling (baritone) - Arthur
Jones; Sam Hornywood - Cabin-boy Glyndebourne Chorus; London Philharmonic
Orchestra/Sir Mark Elder
rec. Glyndebourne Opera House, May and June 2010
GLYNDEBOURNE GFOCD 017-10 [3 CDs: 22.47 + 60.56 + 80.23]
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
Despite the many virtues of this new set the Hickox Chandos version is to
be preferred.
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