Mainly Opera and Ballet
This revival of Glyndebourne’s excellent production of Britten’s Billy Budd was well worth a second view after some dozen years. It gives a brilliant evocation of the intensity of life and action in 1797 on a British battleship, some years after mutinies at Spithead and on HMS Nore — see my review in The Article.
Last month the Royal Opera staged a new production of Carmen, and this month Glyndebourne did the same. On balance I preferred the Royal Opera’s, but wish there had been better communication between the two administrations to avoid a clash. Both productions had their merits, and this one by a female director seemed too focused …
In earlier operas such as Peter Grimes and Turn of the Screw, Britten had already shown a striking musical ability to interleave scenes of innocent joy with others of dark and mysterious intensity, so he was ideally suited to turning Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream into an opera. It was first performed at Aldeburgh in 1960 …
