The crew of the Indomitable, at Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Photo: Tristram Kenton
Nelson’s flagship,Victory, and the stage at Glyndebourne measure about the same, port to starboard – roughly 15 metres. So the three decks of the 18th- century man-of-war Indomitable fit snugly into the Sussex opera house. The vessel, though, would have had about 20 times as many men on board.
In Benjamin Britten’s 1951 opera Billy Budd, claustrophobia and bullying, a crucible for mutiny, seep through the warship like the mist that brings an assault on the French to an anticlimactic standstill. Harmony across the ranks is as unstable as a hammock, grown men taking orders from boys of higher birth.
A fuse is lit when innocent, eager recruit Billy falls foul of the powerful master-at-arms; his desire for Billy is sublimated into the desire to destroy him. Baritone Sam Carl, making his Glyndebourne debut, gives a tremendous performance as Claggart, his heart as black as his uniform. An artistically defined musical line and the unsettling notes at the end of phrases mirror both the effectiveness and the warped nature of Claggart’s hate campaign.
Thomas Mole as Billy. ©Tristram Kenton
Muted by his speech impediment, rendered incoherent by injustice, Thomas Mole’s cherub-faced Billy goes from victim to slaughterer with one punch. This is quite a weighty voice for a character not yet grounded by age or experience, but his passing similarity to the bullied Novice (an affecting Laurence Kilsby) reinforces Claggart’s problematic relationship with appealing young men.
Billy’s rage feeds on frustration, as does the crew’s. It bubbles again but subsides when the incensed shipmates of the young man, now condemned to death, fruitlessly and wordlessly attempt an uprising. Presiding over this uneasy crew is Captain Vere, who opens and closes the opera with the reminiscences of an old man. He stuck to the rules, to keep his men in line. But (unlike Nelson) he does not know those men: “Starry” Vere, with his head in and beyond the clouds, failed them by not recognising the villainy of Claggart.
William Thomas as Mr Flint, Allan Clayton as Captain Vere and Dingle Yandell as Mr Redburn. ©Tristram Kenton
Tenor Allan Clayton’s Vere is thus a remote figure, first seen disembodied in Michael Grandage’s superb 2010 production, revived for the first time. At sea, literally and metaphorically, he defers to his fellow officers, among them first lieutenant Mr Redburn, sung with naval precision and confidence by bass-baritone Dingle Yandell and William Thomas’s resolute sailing master Mr Flint. Among Vere’s motley crew, tenor Alasdair Elliott as a protesting conscript and bass Clive Bailey as faithful old Dansker are rounded characters.
Nicholas Carter conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra with an ear for the drama and sense of looming danger at which Britten excelled. Revival director Ian Rutherford has solid gold to work with in Paule Constable’s lighting, which makes a history painting of every tableau, and Christopher Oram’s design – his set with its giddying perspective and apparel, from grubby to pristine.
This was Grandage’s first venture into opera, and his theatrical background is in the very rigging of this flagship production, shipshape from topmast to keel.
Billy Budd is sung in English with English surtitles. There are eight further performances from 2 to 30 July