Billy Budd dir Michael Grandage, Glyndebourne, 26th May-2nd June, Tel: 01273 813 813
After ten years of discussion, theatre director Michael Grandage is finally making his opera debut. Yet that decade of anticipation wilts beside the 59 years Glyndebourne audiences have waited for the house’s first-ever staging of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd. There were, literally, sound reasons for the delay. The opera’s orchestra was too big for the pit in the old building. Even now, decisions are still being made about where to place the large number of timpani the score requires.
Grandage is alert to such issues because, unlike the surprising number of opera directors who can’t read music, he used to play the French horn. That’s particularly useful for a piece set aboard a man-of-war which, in addition to a huge amount of chorus work, features the orchestra in an unusually dramatic role. The climax, off-stage and unsung, is created solely by 34 shimmering orchestral chords.
With EM Forster and Eric Crozier’s libretto supplying all the subtext a theatre director could wish for, Glyndebourne is the perfect place to stage it. Why? Because opera singers in international houses are traditionally only paid performance fees, and there is little incentive for them to appear at rehearsals. Grandage, however, has his entire company for six weeks. Expect the drama this great work deserves.
This article originally appeared in the May 2010 edition of Prospect.
