Billy Budd

5 things to know about Billy Budd

1° Britten’s Billy

Benjamin Britten’s great breakthrough as a composer came in 1945 with his opera Peter Grimes. He followed this up with two chamber operas, The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring, and a children’s opera, The Little Sweep, before making his return to the full opera format with Billy Budd. The work received its premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1951, where it was conducted by Britten himself. Britten’s life partner, the tenor Peter Pears, sung the role of Captain Vere.

2° Unfree men

Certain themes recur throughout Britten’s works: conflicts between individuals and society; the horrors of war; destructive conventions; and repressed desire. Billy Budd confronts all these issues and looks at how they affect our concept of manliness, especially in relation to homosexuality. The opera was written at a time when homosexuality was still illegal under British law, and theatrical and operatic performances continued to be censored. What the opera says about these themes is therefore given in coded form. But this opera is also about being a human being in a world where one is ultimately alone, where we yearn to belong, to be loved, forgiven and accepted.

3° The most beautiful story

The text is based on a novel by the American literary giant Herman Melville, perhaps best known as the author of another maritime adventure, Moby Dick. One of his last works, Billy Budd, Sailor was discovered among Melville’s papers when he died in 1891. Thomas Mann, another giant of literature, called the novella ‘the most beautiful story in the world’. The Italian composer Giorgio Ghedini also created an operatic version of Billy Budd, Sailor, which premiered two years before Britten’s. Several other adaptations of the novella have been made, the most critically acclaimed of which include Louis O. Coxe and Robert Chapman's stage play, which opened on Broadway in 1951, and Peter Ustinov’s 1962 film, which starred the young Terence Stamp as Billy Budd and the director himself as Captain Vere.

4° Moored in Oslo

‘The first time I walked into this amazing opera house and looked straight through the foyer and out on the sea, it struck me that it is in itself a ship,’ says Annilese Miskimmon, who became Director of Opera for Den Norske Opera and Ballet in 2017. For her, Billy Budd is the opera that, more than any other, really brings the sea onto the stage and into the music. And when she realised that it had never before been performed in Norway, it was obvious for her that they had to do it. ‘It is a great privilege,’ says Annilese Miskimmon, ‘both as Opera Director of this house and as director of this production to be able to introduce Billy Budd to Norway – especially with such a great conductor as Mark Wigglesworth and the fabulous opera orchestra we have here.’

5. Bunks, bombs and U-boats.

Annilese Miskimmon sets her new production of Billy Budd on a submarine during the Vichy regime in 1940s France. Here we meet a close and claustrophobic environment, controlled by sailors’ discipline and the meaningless necessity of war. ‘I wanted to build an entire submarine to get the real feeling of claustrophobia,’ says set and costume designer Annemarie Woods. ‘We just had to pick a section, unfortunately, but I think you get a picture that it extends beyond the sides.’ The 14-metre long, 6.5-metre high aluminium structure is Norweign National Opera's big investment for the season. ‘It will be a huge, huge, huge construction’ says scenery metalworker Stephan Udbjørg. ‘It will be one of the nicest, greatest and toughest things that have ever been on stage in the Opera House.’