DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd is set on a British warship in 1797, but it is not a heroic epic. The Brits seek out French enemies in the ocean mists, but never quite find them. The ever grim, press-ganged crew is cheered by the arrival of the handsome, forthright, able seaman Billy. He’s the perfect British seaman, but his very handsomeness and forthrightness land him in serious trouble.
Like much of Melville, Billy Budd is more a treatise than a tale, a meditation on “maleness” as a philosophic quality. Melville loved the ambiguities hidden in the male drive for action and greater purpose. What better way to let these obsessions play out than by trapping a bunch of men aboard a ship?
In 1951, Benjamin Britten turned Billy Budd into an opera sung entirely by men. Librettists E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier hewed closely to the novella, but added a stronger undercurrent of homoeroticism. The composer used the queasy musical modalities of the mid-20th century to work tension and ambiguity into sea shanties. The result was both revolutionary and darkly beautiful.
The L.A. Opera production of Billy Budd at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion through March 16 as part of the ongoing Britten Centenary Celebration is striking, magnificently sung and emotionally involving, even if it plays more to the cerebral than the seagoing.
The action is dominated by tenor Richard Croft as Captain Vere, who we meet as an old man trying to make sense of what happened aboard his ship years before. Croft brings the perfect uncertainty to Vere. He is both musically and dramatically a strong, intelligent man who ultimately fails in his moral responsibility when he chooses to follow regulations over what he knows to be “the good.”
Baritone Liam Bonner, singing Billy Budd for the first time, creates a gentle, innocent and lyrical hero, one made imperfect only by his naiveté and persistent stutter. Though it is hard to believe that the rest of the crew looks up to him as a potent male specimen he is plenty likable. Bonner’s rendering of Budd’s pre-execution aria, “Look! Through the port comes the moonlight astray” was both exquisite and perfectly unsentimental. Look for him to sing this role worldwide.
The most powerful voice onstage is Greer Grimsley as the villain John Claggart, the Master at Arms. Claggart finds himself physically and emotionally drawn to Budd, and so decides he must destroy the lad. When he falsely charges Budd with mutiny, tragedy becomes inevitable. In the words of Vere, Claggart is “Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!"
Grimsley’s spectacular bass-baritone is known throughout the Wagnerian world. The force and control he brings to Claggart is remarkable, though it might have been enhanced by a tad more erotic longing and a tad less caution in his time onstage.
The supporting performances are all strong, starting with James Creswell as Dansker, the older crewman who “never interferes in aught and never gives advice.” The officers are well portrayed and solidly sung by Patrick Blackwell, Anthony Michaels-Moore and Daniel Sumegi.
Still, it’s the chorus of seamen that must dominate Billy Budd. Choral director Grant Gershon brought his usual and miraculous musical precision to the L.A. Opera Chorus, though again a bit more musical risk in the crew would have helped — a little less repressed, a little more British navy.
This lack of Redcoat pomp is, however, central to the somewhat abstract 2000 production, designed by Francesca Zambello and revived for the current run. In Zambello’s vision, the men are costumed as a scruffy, vaguely 19th-century lot, and not at all like sailors and officers of a 74-gun Man-of-War. The deck of the ship has been simplified to a huge, raked platform with a single (and appropriately) crucifix-like mast. The infinite sea has been reduced to dark-blue panels. Cannons are flashing lights.
The result has just enough visual interest, but when Zambello loses the uniforms much of the dramatic tension disappears. The staging is also somewhat static with tame fight scenes and a crew so beaten-down that they don’t seem to move as seamen at all. A little more hoisting and heaving would seem helped.
But these are quibbles. Conductor James Conlon clearly loves this music, and he brings great heart and commitment to the performance, often supplying a force from the orchestra that pushes at the singers to do more onstage. The Britten Centenary has produced a remarkable Turn of the Screw and Albert Herring. Billy Budd continues that track record.
Bill Budd runs through March 16 at 135 N. Grand Ave., laopera.com.