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The travelling three counter-tenor circus

London
Barbican
11/25/1999 -  
Benjamin Britten Billy Budd
Philip Langridge (Captain Vere), Simon Keenlyside (Billy Budd), John Tomlinson (Claggart), Alan Opie (Redburn), Matthew Best (Flint), Frances Egerton (Red Whiskers), Alan Ewing (Ratcliffe),  Quentin Hayes (Donald), Clive Bayley (Dansker), Richard Coxon (Squeak), Mark Padmore (Novice), Roderick Williams (Novice's friend/Arthur Jones), Daniel Norman (Maintop)
Tiffin Boys' Choir, London Symphony Chorus (men's voices) London Symphony Orchestra
Richard Hickox (conductor)

The two-act version of Billy Budd used in this performance is to be recorded almost immediately by the same forces. This concert version, though obviously thoroughly prepared, was as exciting and moving as you could hope for from a live performance. The chorus was massed behind the orchestra, while the principals, in the modified evening dress that seems to be usual for semi-stagings these days, acted out their scenes in front. This worked wonderfully, emphasising Vere's isolation and the individual struggles in the middle of the repressed mass of the crew and the more vigorously disturbed mass of the sea.

John Tomlinson as Claggart was clearly separate from the rest of the cast, a malevolent force of nature. (There were even a couple of boos as he took his bow at the end, which is homage indeed from a concert-hall audience.) This was a role where he couldn't be too loud or relentless, and he added a truly terrifying malice to the violence.

Simon Keenlyside's nervily cheerful Budd seemed even more vulnerable beside him. His voice seemed fragile, less beautiful in his monologues than in some other comparable performances, but this could have been because he was colouring every note to express the meaning of the words. His famous dawn monologue, "Billy in the darbies", was heart-breaking, far from pretty, but the following monologue, "Can't shake hands", in which he comes to terms with dying, turned out to be even more of a tour de force, both as a dramatic composition and as a performance.

Philip Langridge as Vere was also vulnerable, his singing not particularly beautiful but agonizingly expressive. His frame-closing monologue combined nostalgia and a kind of redemption through accepting despair that left the audience stunned for many seconds after the music ended.

The rest of the cast was impeccable, and luxurious, down to the excellent young tenor Daniel Norman singing a few bars as Maintop. Clive Bayley, who must be heir-apparent to John Tomlinson, was a mellifluous Dansker, and Mark Padmore a disturbed, destroyed, Novice. Alan Opie and Francis Egerton were only the best of a cast of supporting characters worthy of a Powell and Pressburger film.

Perhaps in the same spirit, Richard Hickox and the London Symphony Orchestra made the music sound more like a Korngold film score that you would have believed possible, though there echoes of Paul Bunyan in Billy Budd that point to the German-American popular art-music genre. The men's voices of the London Symphony Chorus were stirring and at times frightening. Not having to scurry around decks and fire cannon, they were able to concentrate on the suppressed rage of the sailor's collective music.


H.E. Elsom

 

 

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