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A review of Billy Budd, Vienna, 2 November 2005
By Ursula Turecek
First of all it came as a positive surprise for me that after four years the chorus and orchestra of the State Opera finally seem to have learned Britten's score; they managed to produce music that sounded like "Billy Budd" (which was not always the case in 2002). Graeme Jenkins conducted the opera very accurately but did not offer anything special. The second part was much better than the first, and the end - from the interlude before "Billy in the Darbies" - was very, very sensitive.
I still don't like the production. The main problem for me is not actually the "angelic" Billy in white but the fact that Decker does not do justice to Britten's score at some crucial points. The worst part being at the end where Britten prescribes exactly in the music as well as in annotations not only which member of the crew enters for the hanging and at which point, but also when the hanging itself takes place. In this production the crew strolls in deliberately, the order being exactly the contrary to what it should be (Vere is there right from the beginning). As a passionate reader of all 20 volumes of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, and other books on the subject of Nelson's navy, I think that this production shows more of a merchantman than of a man-of-war, the sailors lingering around all the time, listlessly pulling some ropes to and fro and so on. This concept of the production together with the Viennese jog trot is pretty much the contrary of what you'd expect on a man-of-war or in the British navy (in the beginning I had the impression that the chorus was impersonating a group of skateboarders, though with their trousers properly on for a change). This was SO different in the London 2000 production!
Kurt Rydl was as much the undifferentiated villain as I had expected (he usually sings Wagner's villains) and he sang as badly as I had expected. Michael Roider once again was a good Vere: but my favourite Vere is Philip Langridge in the ENO video from the 80’s. Langridge is the standard, and in comparison to him Roider is good. The rest of the cast was mediocre, dreary but not bad.
And Billy was marvellous of course. He doesn't look the 18-year old boy any longer, that's true, but on stage he IS this innocent boy. Playful - always finding a way to play some inoffensive trick on the crew member next to him and laughing and having fun most of the time of the first part of the opera. Naive - experiencing everything that happens to him so big-eyed, overwhelmed by everything life has in store for him at first, but knocked down by the weight of the second part of the opera. Bursting with energy – there is hardly a moment on stage when he simply walks, he keeps running all the time. Until Vere's "betrayal" he is so full of strength and energy in every movement. He can't even stand really still when standing to attention, brimming over with enthusiasm. It's fascinating, you really see in his face that he is a mature man but the impression he gives is that of a boy, an innocent and very vulnerable boy.
That's what makes the end so horrible. And this time it was even more horrible than every time before because I had the impression that this Billy really was broken after Vere had let him down. Never before have I heard him sing the ballad like this, he was lying there like what in Vienna we call "ein Häuferl Elend" (a picture of misery) and singing at times with something like the "boyish" voice he sometimes has. It was really hard to bear. But what I think was even harder to bear was the farewell, because every other time I've heard him so far he had this conviction in his voice in the end, when he is singing the last "that's enough". But this time - I don't know if this was by chance or if he did this deliberately because he felt like it - the conviction of this last "that's enough" was not there, for me that is.
His voice was most beautiful again - powerful, masculine and yet extremely soft and lyrical at times. One part that he interpreted quite differently to how he usually does was the end of Act II in the meeting with Dansker - he is usually extremely lyrical at this point, like a boy too, but this time he was more defiant, really overtly contradicting Dansker. He was clearly to be heard even when the chorus sang too - he also sang with the chorus when the crew plus Billy were on stage and at times you could even hear him out there.
He got most of the applause and a lot of cheers, and during the ovations he was very playful too, making fun with his neighbours and thanking the orchestra very enthusiastically.
Let’s hope that the Billy Budd performances in December in London will be filmed to save SK’s very special Billy for posterity.
Ursula Turecek, November 2005