TY - JOUR
AU - Ward-Griffin,, Danielle
AB - Abstract Although the term ‘realism’ is frequently deployed in discussing opera productions, its meanings are far from self-evident. Examining four stage and screen productions of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd (1951–66), this article traces how this mode was reworked through television in the mid-twentieth century. Linking theatrical and televisual developments in the UK and the USA, I demonstrate how television’s concerns for intimacy and immediacy guided both the 1951 premiere and the condensed 1952 NBC television version. I then show how challenges to the status quo, particularly the ‘angry young men’ of British theatre and the backlash against naturalism on television, spurred the development of a revamped ‘realistic’ style in the 1964 stage and 1966 BBC productions of Billy Budd. Beyond Billy Budd, this article explores how the meanings of realism changed during the 1950s and 1960s, and how they continue to influence our study of opera performance history. ‘The main problem seems to me to decide how far we are going to be realistic and how far not.’1 So opens a dialogue between the director Basil Coleman and the designer John Piper about Billy Budd. Published before the 1951 Covent Garden premiere, this article, entitled ‘Billy Budd on the Stage’, was meant to offer a behind-the-scenes peek at the creative process while drumming up interest in the opera, but it also introduces the confusing criterion of ‘realism’ by which the first and subsequent productions have been evaluated.2 Usually associated with the premiere’s eighteenth-century man-o-war setting, the term ‘realism’ reappears time and again in reviews and scholarship on new and old Billy Budd productions.3 And yet, although this term is often used in an axiomatic way, its meanings are far from self-evident. Part of the confusion stems from where realism is said to reside—in the production, story, or the music—and how these various operatic systems are thought to work together.4 First, realism is usually associated with verisimilitude and is invoked for any production featuring detailed scenery and costumes that seems to represent a recognizably ‘truthful’ depiction of the world beyond the stage.5 Second, realism often makes an appearance in discussions of how to convey a story’s psychological intensity, although writers disagree as to whether a ‘realistic’ production style may help or hurt efforts to bring out the inner dimension.6 Third, realism in opera is frequently associated with particular verismo works of the late nineteenth century, although it is hotly debated whether or not these operas can be said to represent a cohesive and suitably ‘realistic’ musical style.7 Fourth and most importantly for this discussion, realism can function as a shorthand to situate the production vis-à-vis the contemporary operatic scene and may be mapped onto other categories, such as ‘traditional’ and ‘updated’, or ‘conservative’ and ‘adventurous’.8 The simple act of ascribing the realistic moniker to a production, then, may actually cloud our understanding of what the staging accomplishes. Further complications arise in Billy Budd due to Britten’s preference for what may be best characterized as ‘selective realism’.9 Given Britten’s strong influence upon the look of his operas, the extent to which a later production conforms to this nebulously defined style can become a litmus test of a director’s adherence to the composer’s intentions.10 It can also act as a black mark, suggesting that a production has been hemmed in by the composer’s supposedly more limited vision. The director Tyrone Guthrie, for instance, dismissed Britten’s approach to the stage as too naturalistic, while scholars such as Paul Kildea have suggested that later productions are better suited to what he describes as the ‘modernist magic’ of the composer’s music.11 Even those who seek to defend Britten’s aesthetic choices often do so by denying their presence. For instance, Philip Brett claimed that staging had little to do with the operas themselves and argued that the main approach should be a self-effacing one, so as to allow the drama, presumably encapsulated in the music, to shine through.12 Whether dismissing or defending the early productions of Britten’s operas, such assessments tend to treat realism as the absence of an explicit aesthetic style, rather than one that could be chosen and employed for particular effect. The description of Billy Budd as realistic, then, may conflate a number of different aesthetic priorities and convey either pleasure or displeasure, depending on the orientation of the viewer. But given the ubiquitous employment of this term, both by Britten’s collaborators and opera critics, simply jettisoning it is not an option. Instead, in this article I ask to what ends the rhetoric of realism was used in creating and evaluating productions of opera in the mid-twentieth century. Even or especially if it was considered to be the default mode of production at this time, in consciously pursuing realism, directors were deciding to do so according to beliefs they held about what it would mean to the audience. I also seek to tease out what these meanings were, how they changed over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, and what they can tell us about the broader operatic landscape. In particular, I seek to reanimate the discourse surrounding realism by focusing on its rebirth through the television screen. Considered to be an inherently realistic medium, television helped to shape the terrain in which live art forms operated and were received. Television and opera are often positioned as diametrically opposed art forms, but I argue that the way that opera directors understood realism became ever more bound up with the development of televisual aesthetics, particularly the concerns with immediacy and intimacy that preoccupied the small screen in the 1950s and 1960s. To be sure, television ownership in the early 1950s was limited, but it spread quickly, especially in the United States and, slightly later, in the United Kingdom.13 It soon developed a hybrid aesthetic that blended together prevailing ideas of stage ‘theatricality’ with televisual techniques. Although early television was often shot in a single-studio ‘theatrical’ style, it quickly came to adopt new techniques for the small screen, while retaining the rhetoric and ‘liveness’ of the theatre.14 For producers of opera—a number of whom were exploring new methods of presenting opera, particularly on a smaller scale—television offered a chance to create a style of opera performance, both on and off screen, that they hoped would cultivate a broader community of viewers.15 Billy Budd is a useful case study, as it was continually remade on stage and screen in the United Kingdom and the United States. In its first fifteen years of existence, the opera was the subject of two television productions by different broadcasters, as well as two separate stage productions at Covent Garden, one for the four-act version in 1951 and another for the revised two-act version in 1964.16 I use each of these productions of Billy Budd to examine a particular realistic approach to the opera, as well as to demonstrate how the practices of realism corresponded with the screen. First, I trace how the early stage production aspired to the intimate and psychological dimensions of television. Next, I consider how Billy Budd lent itself to the prevailing aesthetic of television naturalism in the 1952 NBC production. Finally, I evaluate how the 1964 stage and 1966 television productions sought to reorient Billy Budd in a new period of gritty realism marked by angry young men on stage and docudramas on the small screen. In each of these productions, the realistic approach employed was not simply a default, but rather had particular connotations that directors sought to exploit. More broadly, I ask what television may bring to our understanding of opera production in the postwar period. According to standard histories, opera production in English-speaking countries remained more or less a backwater until the late twentieth-century incursion of new styles from the Continent.17 But such narratives often do not take the screen into account, particularly experiments in the sphere of television broadcasting, in which English-speaking countries, in particular the United States and the United Kingdom, led the field. This article offers a framework for evaluating how opera production in these countries sought to accommodate new modes of viewing and aesthetics engendered by the camera. This framework, I contend, would help us to understand better how and why realism experienced a resurgence in the 1950s and 1960s—and how its reformulation on screen continues to affect operatic production today. REALISM AND NATURALISM Although in this article I use the term realism throughout, its cousin, naturalism, is never far away; in fact, these two terms were often used interchangeably by Britten’s collaborators and critics—and, in keeping with this practice, I will also make reference to naturalism, particularly when discussing its repurposing on television.18 Still, despite their frequent conflation in the twentieth century, realism and naturalism have different literary meanings. While both styles emerged in French literature of the late nineteenth century and attempted to relate the fictional world to that of society, realism hinged on a symbolic relationship between the individual and the external environment to illuminate the inner psychology of the character whereas naturalism demonstrated how environment and heredity determined the individual’s fate.19 Realism sought to depict the world as it was, in all its unvarnished mundanity, whereas naturalism, inspired by a scientific approach, focused on the darker pathologies that afflict human beings. As a result, naturalism has often been thought of as the ‘pessimistic’ cousin of realism, rejecting the very Enlightenment concept of a ‘knowable’ world in which rational actors move in favour of a highly deterministic view of human nature.20 On the stage, however, such categorization could be less clear: in naturalism, everyday elements of the scenic picture may symbolize the invisible forces governing life, whereas in realism these components may stand in for the psychology of the individual character. In both cases, the contemporary setting was a recognizable simulacrum of the world beyond the stage; it was the beliefs about the relationship between the individual and this world that differed. Realism and naturalism also frequently shared a social purpose. Originating as a challenge to the illusion of the theatre, naturalist plays depicted lower-class characters facing difficult situations that disturbed the black-and-white morality of the theatre-going classes. Realist theatre was more preoccupied with the middle classes, but also challenged accepted mores without offering substitutes.21 However, as these stage aesthetics became more widely adopted in continental Europe, this activist impulse could become buried and the emphasis on ‘real life’ scenery could seem like old hat. Still, even though early twentieth-century developments were often thought to be partly a reaction to naturalism and realism—of portraying things as they ‘were’ in nature—they often drew from the same well, as Raymond Williams observed: [Between 1890 and 1920] new methods and conventions were developed to take more account of reality, to include ‘psychological’ as well as ‘external’ reality and to show the social and physical world as a dynamic rather than a merely passive and determining environment. … [T]hese were often described as breaks ‘from naturalism’ or ‘beyond realism’ but the confusing irony is that most of them were attempts to realise more deeply and more adequately the original impulses of the realist and naturalist movements.22 Nor was this reinvention of realism and naturalism limited to the turn of the century. A number of artistic movements in the mid-twentieth century have revisited these ideologies under the banner of renewal in order to reinstate older values. For instance, in spoken theatre, Christopher Innes has shown how the ‘kitchen-sink realism’ of John Osborne and the ‘angry young men’ of the 1950s can be traced back to D. H. Lawrence forty years earlier.23 Indeed, although realism may have functioned as a rallying cry for change—and it was most often realism, not naturalism, that was the inspiration for later movements—it was usually for transformation of a familiar sort. As the media scholar John Caughie notes, one of the great strengths of realism is its chameleon nature, its ability to ‘transform the new currents it encounters on its way—naturalism, surrealism, the Absurd, Brecht—and [how it is] equally happy to be transformed by them’.24 Thus realism came to serve as an umbrella term in the mid-twentieth century. Evaluating a later iteration of ‘realism’, then, is less a matter of applying a clear-cut definition and more a process of recovering the impulses behind the trends of the theatre and the ways in which it sought to speak to audiences. REALISM AND OPERA Realism is further complicated by the nature of opera. As scholars have repeatedly noted, the very premiss of opera—people singing—defies any representation of real life.25 At the same time, many acknowledge that operatic productions can be realistic; critics frequently praise or decry the realism of the stagecraft.26 However, unlike in literature and the theatre, where realism was thought to serve a social purpose of illuminating grievances or contemporary ills, realism in opera has often been regarded as a reactionary response. For example, Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker have argued that realism frequently serves ‘as a means to attack yesterday’s operatic practice, an agent in those continual attempts to reform opera, discipline it, rein it in, purge it of the excesses yesterday is deemed to have committed’.27 Realism in opera, then, may become a way to impose limits on the art form lest it become too unwieldy. All this discussion of realism in opera naturally brings to mind verismo, which has its own tangled history. As Arman Schwartz has shown, the question of whether a non-representational art form like music can ever be realistic was at the heart of contemporary debates about verismo, revealing broader anxieties about the fate of operatic singing, and the future of the Italian musical tradition, in the late nineteenth century.28 In the mid-twentieth century, similar concerns about the role of music underpinned the rise of what Elise K. Kirk has called the ‘American verismo’ operas of composers like Gian-Carlo Menotti.29 Writing in the early 1950s, W. H. Auden warned against such operas, arguing that they were too concerned with the life of the common man, rather than the unique characters that opera demands: ‘whatever his role, an actor who sings is more an uncommon man, more a master of his fate, even as a self-destroyer, than an actor who speaks’.30 In particular, he suggested that Menotti’s The Consul put forth a plot that was both too real and too remote from most of the audience members’ experiences to allow it to stand in for broader forces, like ‘man’s existential estrangement’.31 For Auden, these deterministic depictions of people caught up in ordinary life were not only unsuitable for opera, but a threat to its very nature, which must exhibit people in their most ‘passionate and willful state of being’, as expressed through song.32 Realism in opera becomes an even stickier wicket once the production is taken into account. Beginning with Wagner’s ‘naturalist’ productions, realism has been perpetually trotted out as a way to reform the stage so as to offer a more absorbing and immediate experience.33 Experiments at Berlin’s Kroll Opera, by Konstantin Stanislavsky at the Bolshoi and Opera Theatre Studio, and by Walter Felsenstein at the Komische Opera in East Berlin, although differing in approach, have successively sought to rehabilitate realism by rejecting their predecessors.34 It is as though, once a particular brand of ‘realism’ became part of the standard operatic apparatus, its power was thought to have been eroded.35 Meanwhile, other styles of production—especially expressionism and symbolism—have derived much of their power precisely through their rejection of the kind of ‘realistic’ world usually seen on stage.36 In both cases, the standard realistic approach is assumed to be a barrier to immediacy, necessitating either rejection or reinvention. This tension can be found in the rhetoric surrounding early productions of Britten’s operas, in which ‘realism’ is simultaneously regarded as both a renewal of and an acquiescence to accepted stage practices. The ‘selectively realistic’ depiction of the sea and village in Peter Grimes was thought to be an exciting part of Britten’s bold new operatic sound, while still understood according to the logic of naturalism, in which the everyday elements reflect and, in some ways, determine the fate of the main character.37 Meanwhile, Albert Herring and The Turn of the Screw fit within the ‘realistic’ tradition of offering comfortable middle- and upper-class locales—the idealized village and the English country house—in which a challenge to accepted mores is presented. But, much like in the spoken theatre, these operas seem to end with the status quo upheld. Indeed, it is this very possibility that the status quo might be reinforced by the ‘realism’ of the stage productions that has so unsettled scholars of Britten’s operas. Echoing Auden’s logic about the willfulness of operatic singing, scholars such as Kildea and Brett have argued that the message of the music is a non-conformist one that pushes against the grain. For these scholars, the seemingly reactionary ‘realism’ of early productions of Britten’s operas either needs to be denied or sidestepped, so that it does not undercut the supposedly adversarial message of his operas.38 The debate about Britten’s preference for stage realism, then, is not just about whether the composer was ‘out of sync’ with postwar production practices. Rather, it stands in for broader arguments about how Britten was an ‘outsider’ in British society or, as Kildea put it, a ‘conservative revolutionary’.39 But this oppositional way of viewing productions of Britten’s operas can miss the mark when it comes to understanding the purpose and reception of ‘realistic’ styles. Instead, I would suggest that focusing on the ways in which the ‘realism’ of the opera productions interacts with the musical choices may lead to a greater understanding of the aesthetic choices made. It is the inherent duality of realism, how it serves as both a source of renewal and an aesthetic to react against, that underscores the early productions of Britten’s operas, as well as broader debates about opera and realism. REALISM AND THE SCREEN Key to understanding the aesthetic of realism is the role of the screen in the 1950s and 1960s, as changing visual standards influenced what was thought of as ‘realism’. Despite concerns about putting opera on screen—critics argued that its theatrical nature would be compromised in the realistic world of the cinema40—opera and film have long shared a common musical and visual vocabulary.41 For instance, film and stage directors such as Luchino Visconti and his disciple Franco Zeffirelli created overwhelming and incredibly detailed stage productions that resembled epic films in their attention to picayune detail and grandeur.42 With their productions seen at La Scala, the Royal Opera House, and the Metropolitan Opera throughout the 1950s and 1960s, this cinematically inspired vision offered a more detailed and ‘real’ approach than previously seen onstage. And yet, over time these opera productions would come to be associated with the illusion and spectacle of the opera house, thus once again recasting this realistic style as operatic.43 The advent of television in English-speaking countries added yet another dimension. Just like earlier debates about opera and film, discussion of putting opera on television also centred on opera’s ability to adapt to what was thought to be the inherent realism of the screen.44 At the same time, television emulated live theatre, seen most clearly in its broadcasts of ‘staged plays’ and, later, studio-shot dramatic productions. Once more cinematic or televisual techniques were adopted, these broadcasts continued to use the language and ideology of the theatre; they even, as Philip Auslander has shown, claimed to improve upon it.45 Given television’s theatrical roots, it may seem strange to associate ‘theatricality’ with the stage and ‘realism’ with the television screen, as neither medium has a natural claim to either one, and these media frequently borrowed practices and aesthetics from one another. In many ways, the ‘realism’ of the television screen was constructed through the techniques of the theatre, even as it was juxtaposed with it. Still, television’s brand of realism, known as ‘television naturalism’, was slightly different from that of the stage as it was focused on the new medium’s immediacy and intimacy. Unlike film, early television was happening in real time, and so it was believed to allow for a more immediate experience. At the same time, because the programme was to be viewed by a single person or group of people on a small screen at home—rather than in a crowd in the cinema—it was frequently assumed that its subject matter and mode of address should also be intimate and personal.46 Although television did not occur in the same space as the viewer, its transmission in the home was meant to become part of domestic life in a way that the theatre did not.47 Of course, these ideas reflect an idealized vision of how television was to function, not its actual use, but they are important insofar as they governed the making of television shows in the 1950s and early 1960s.48 As Caughie has noted, television naturalism was not, as commonly thought, determined solely by the technology of the time, but rather was ‘the logical aesthetic of a technology whose essence was conceived in terms of immediacy, relay and the “live”’.49 It became, in essence, ‘a tag attached to an aesthetic founded on immediacy’.50 For proponents of putting opera on television, this aesthetic was part of the medium’s appeal, as it was thought to encourage a renewed relationship between the audience member and the performer.51 Eschewing the grandness of opera in the opera house, a number of short and compact works were written for television, capitalizing upon its propensity towards psychological character portraits and family dramas.52 Even operas not written for the screen were thought to be influenced by the production practices and viewing habits engendered by new media. For instance, Elise K. Kirk has attributed the small-scale and character-driven dramas of Menotti to the ways in which broadcasting media was reshaping the American theatrical experience.53 Realism in mid-twentieth-century opera productions, then, was a paradox: it could be interpreted as both a reactionary choice as well as a method for meeting the new, televisual expectations of audiences. Particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States, the renewal of realism on stage and on screen exposes these contradictions: it was not one style, but rather a myriad of approaches, defined as much by the medium as by a rejection of what the tradition may have meant in the past. In fact, it was this strange mixture of past and present that may help account for the continuing appeal of realism: its draw remained because of the assumed familiarity—as well as present-day relevancy—of its codes to audience members. Its use in mid-twentieth-century opera productions, then, can be understood as part of the art form’s continual reinvention so as to communicate with a broad audience in a new media landscape. BILLY BUDD AT COVENT GARDEN (1951) Written at the behest of the Arts Council for a large-scale opera for the Festival of Britain, Billy Budd represented an about-face for Britten, who, with The Rape of Lucretia (1946) and Albert Herring (1947), had turned towards chamber opera, a form that he believed would revive opera outside of London and that allowed him greater artistic control, as these operas were performed by his English Opera Group.54 As a large, government-supported project, Billy Budd endured a tortuous road to the stage: at first, Britten intended the work for Sadler’s Wells, which had premiered his last large-scale opera, Peter Grimes, in 1945. However, as the commission developed, the final home for Billy Budd ended up being the much more imposing Covent Garden.55 Although one of Britten’s librettists—the famed novelist E. M. Forster—was keen to write a ‘grand opera mounted clearly and grandly’,56 this venue would prove to be a challenge, as some of Billy Budd’s most compelling moments were ill designed for the vast spaces of the opera house, as will be described below. In addition, from the outset, Britten and his librettists, Forster and Eric Crozier, struggled with the degree of realism they believed was needed in Billy Budd. Based on Herman Melville’s novella of the same name, Billy Budd is known for its blend of detailed descriptions of everyday life with the more universal meanings that Auden desired in opera. Billy, an eighteenth-century virtuous sailor, is persecuted by the evil man-at-arms, Claggart, and in effect condemned to death by Captain Vere, who refuses to intercede on his behalf. Although Billy Budd is a historical tale—and thus does not conform to the contemporary subject matter of most naturalist drama—it cobbled together different naval chronicles and sought to depict military life at sea accurately.57 It is also highly deterministic, as Billy’s fate is sealed by forces beyond his control.58 At the same time, Melville famously and deliberately leaves certain things unsaid, not least the encounter behind the closed door during which Vere tells Billy his fate. The meaning of the tale remains ambiguous, with many reading it as a Christian allegory.59 Britten and his librettists were faced with a conundrum: how should they represent the symbolic side of the tale? In 1948 Forster wrote to Britten: ‘My idea was to start realistically, and then alter the ship and crew until they were what we wanted, and good and evil and eternal matters could shine through them.’60 Forster wished for the opera to begin with ‘human beings and the smell of tar’ and to become more abstract as it progressed, so that ‘the ordinary lovable (and hateable) human beings [would be] connected with immensities through the tricks of art’.61 In the end, however, the librettists took a different approach.62 Instead of gradually shifting the balance from realistic portrayals of the characters to a more abstract representation of the tale, the depiction of the everyday was to be coupled with its universal message. For Crozier, it was less important ‘whether or not Billy, Claggart and Vere in fact existed, [but rather that] they exist immortally in Melville’s tragic story against a background of exact observation and realism’.63 Thus, realism was not thought of as simply relating to the literal, surface-level details, but rather was a medium through which the universal meanings of the tale would become known. To this end, Britten and his librettists sought to be as accurate as possible in reproducing ordinary sea life: in plotting the actions upon the man-o-war, they studied naval books and drawings and planned a visit to the Victory in Portsmouth.64 Not only was realism here thought to make the story historically plausible, but getting the specifics right was also seen to be a necessary precondition to accessing its more abstract meanings. This struggle to illuminate the universal through the everyday was most famously seen in the 1951 Covent Garden production, directed by Basil Coleman and designed by John Piper. In an interview before the opening night, Coleman remarked: ‘dual planes seem to me to run throughout the opera as they do in Melville’.65 Coleman related these planes to the events on the ship and to Vere’s mind, as the whole opera is told from his perspective. Scholars have seized upon this statement, with Kildea suggesting that the greater the abstraction of a production, the more the psychological plane would be brought out.66 But for Coleman and Piper, these planes were not oppositional or mutually exclusive; rather, much like the librettists, Coleman and Piper decided to use supposedly ‘realistic’ moments to illustrate Vere’s psychology. For instance, Coleman made use of the mist described at the end of the French battle scene in the Melville novella: For me, the most realistic scene is the Battle, Act III, i., where the crew have very definite things to do, loading guns and firing them, stowing hammocks and so on. Then the mist descends again and they are cut off from the enemy. But the mist is as much a mist of doubt and fear in the mind of Vere when he is about to close with Claggart at the beginning and finally at the end of the scene.67 The use of the mist as a psychological metaphor has long been noted by Britten scholars, but it is in its dual function that we can see how Coleman and Piper were envisaging how stage realism might work. Piper, for instance, pointed out that there is no strict division between the psychological and the real in this opera, stating that ‘we must never lose sight of the fact that the whole thing is taking place in Vere’s mind, and is being recalled by him’.68 In Piper’s design, the ship was surrounded by black cloths to make it more ‘exciting and limitless’ and the production used lighting effects so that each scene faded in and out as though called up by Vere. Still, such metaphorical representations could sometimes come in for criticism as psychologically vacant, cheap tricks. For example, in discussing the battle scene in Act III, sc. i, Andrew Porter criticized the mist as a ‘crudely contrived piece of symbolism … presented at Covent Garden with almost unbelievable naivety’.69 The problem, for Porter, was that the meaning of any such ‘realistic’ metaphorical moments was too obvious, too literal. At the same time, such everyday detail could be used to reinforce the very ambiguity of the story. During the famous interview scene where Captain Vere tells Billy his fate behind a closed door, Coleman insisted that ‘the whole attention of the audience must be riveted to the door through which they have gone, and it must therefore be in a prominent position’.70 During this scene, Britten composed a series of thirty-four triads, a passage that, more than anything else, seems to foreground music’s non-representational nature. As Philip Rupprecht has noted, this music corresponds with Melville’s similarly evasive language describing this moment in the novella.71 Like this passage, Britten’s interview scene simultaneously invites and resists scholarly interpretation. Its mysterious nature, centrality to the plot, and its musical distinction from the rest of the opera seem to demand commentary, but its lack of a clear tonal or motivic governing structure can bedevil attempts at analysis. Most analyses focus on just how unmoored this passage is from the rest of the opera: Peter Evans has argued that Britten elevated the triad to a ‘symbolic rôle that is unprecedented’ in an ‘essentially independent musical structure’, Arnold Whittall has noted the avoidance of common-tone voice-leading between chords, while Philip Rupprecht has suggested that, after the motivic saturation of the rest of the opera—and the trial scene in particular—the ‘overall effect, devoid of real melody, is of an imposing emptiness of texture and harmony’.72 Marked by contrasts in dynamics and instrumentation, with each chord played by a different family of instruments, the effect of this passage is not of continuity, but rather, as Whittall and Rupprecht note, of disruption.73 Indeed, what is most striking is the way in which Britten’s foregrounding of the ‘everyday’ elements of music—common triads, familiar groupings of instruments, and dynamic contrasts—obscures easy analysis rather than enables it. In this way, Britten uses the basic ingredients of music to ‘narrate’ the missing scene in the room while avoiding saying anything precise at all. Although Coleman’s stage door was a much more concrete representation, its function in this scene is similar to the triads in that he used a common object to confound audiences: the fixation on the door was to act as a barrier to any particular interpretation.74 Given the dramatic and yet mysterious nature of the interview scene—both in the novella and the opera—the decision to withhold any additional visual cues invites speculation on the part of the audience. This scene was frequently praised; in a letter to Britten, the scholar E. J. Dent suggested that the composer make cuts to the opera ‘but do not on any account make the “obvious” cut after Vere goes into the dark room’ during which the chords are heard.75 Paralleling the music, the production avoided spelling out the meaning, instead activating audience members’ imaginations by offering nothing more than a door through which they could anxiously try to peer. In addition to using realistic detail for psychological ends, Coleman’s cultivation of the dual planes resulted in a proto-televisual production style. For example, the entire opera is framed by a prologue and epilogue, in which an older Vere, played by Peter Pears, reminisces. Following Britten’s instructions, Coleman wrote that, in order to get inside his head, they needed to ‘get him as close to the audience as possible’, much like a close-up.76 Mervyn Cooke has suggested that critics who viewed Billy Budd in operatic, rather than literary terms, approved of this opening gambit,77 but this framing device more readily brought to mind the screen; one critic even called it a ‘cinematographic “throwback” ’.78 This moment may also recall Britten’s earlier involvement in film music composition, particularly for documentaries by the GPO Unit in the 1930s. Indeed, previous scholars including Cooke have noted how many of Britten’s musical and dramatic effects relate to cinematic strategies, such as cross-fading and flashbacks.79 For the visual side of the production, however, it seems as though such cinematic parallels were a concern, rather than an advantage. Indeed, Coleman and Piper were well aware of how their audience might (mis)interpret some of these devices. For example, Coleman warned that he and Piper must ‘avoid any suggestion of fancy-dress or films about pirates and mutinies, which I think is a danger!’80 They even wished to make the costumes as ‘authentic’ as possible so as to avoid associations with what they considered to be the ‘flashy’ style of film.81 The use of historical detail, then, was not necessarily thought of as a by-product of film, but rather as a way to avoid the viewing expectations engendered by the screen. Instead, the production’s focus on everyday detail and intimate close-ups actually brings to mind the nascent style seen on television at this time. Of course, it is unlikely that this production was directly influenced by television: as previously mentioned, television sets were not that widespread in the UK in the early 1950s and Coleman’s familiarity with the medium was still limited.82 Nor would most commentators or audience members be thinking in televisual terms yet. But, as Guthrie noted in 1955, television relied upon many older theatrical practices, not least that of psychological realism, and it is possible to see many parallels between the practices of Billy Budd and early television.83 For instance, Coleman’s belief that nearness to Vere would open up the psychological dimension bespeaks the aesthetic of naturalism promoted on television at the time. As the 1950s television producer Jan Bussell recounted, early television functioned as a ‘cosy’ medium: ‘The artist is brought to your fireside just the size he would be if he were really there. This permits extremely intimate acting.’84 This kind of thinking is evident in Coleman’s decision to place Vere downstage, close to the audience, as he stated that ‘it must be intimate, a confession almost’.85 To be sure, the reception in the vast Covent Garden would only make such intimacy perceptible to those lucky enough to be in the front rows. But the belief that closing in on Vere would offer access to his thoughts and feelings demonstrate how this opera relied upon the intimate, direct address that would come to define television. In his production score, too, Coleman wrote out a ‘soundtrack’ approach that would later be associated with television and was already well known on film. Many of his indications for movement correspond exactly with an audio cue in the score. For instance, in the scene where two officers and Claggart interview the new recruits, Coleman sketched out the positions of the characters in the top left-hand corner of the page and specified the exact notes during which the master-at-arms should brandish his rattan, thus showing how the music is meant to map onto the threatening gestures (see Pl. 1).86 In the third system, when Claggart asks Red Whiskers his name, Coleman wrote the words ‘rattan out of belt’ for two semiquavers in the orchestra, and later indicated that the ‘rattan [should] twitch here, gently’. (Interestingly, the 1952 NBC television production took the same approach in using camera shots of Claggart’s hand holding the rattan during these musical moments.) Of course, by supplying a ‘visual narrative’ for the music, Coleman may have opened the production up to accusations of ‘mickey-mousing’, the very kind of literalism that most critics and scholars derided. At the same time, this ‘pointing up’ of sonic elements helped to draw attention to small-scale movements on the grand opera stage, underscoring the menace of Claggart and the threat of violence his rattan represents. As on screen, this focus on concrete objects was never simply ‘literal’ or purely ‘psychological’, but rather both. Pl. 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Act I, sc. ii, Basil Coleman’s Production Score (Four-Act), Box 4, Coleman Archive, Britten–Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh, UK (p. 32). ‘Billy Budd, Op. 50’ Benjamin Britten, Eric Crozier, Edward Forester © 1951, 1952 By Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission Pl. 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Act I, sc. ii, Basil Coleman’s Production Score (Four-Act), Box 4, Coleman Archive, Britten–Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh, UK (p. 32). ‘Billy Budd, Op. 50’ Benjamin Britten, Eric Crozier, Edward Forester © 1951, 1952 By Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission It may not be that surprising, then, that Billy Budd was made into two television productions during the composer’s lifetime. In their use of selective realism, Coleman, Piper, and Britten espoused the realistic style that was quickly becoming associated with television. Although the ‘realistic’ approach to producing Billy Budd on television was generally attributed to the new medium, the 1951 original production shows how realism was as much a concern for the producers of the stage version of Billy Budd as it would be in later screen versions. In fact, it was this production—and Coleman and Piper’s well-publicized discussion about realism—that set the terms according to which subsequent productions of Billy Budd were judged. SCENES FROM BILLY BUDD (NBC, 1952) Although a fair amount of scholarship has been devoted to the relationship between Britten’s operas and film, less attention has been paid to the adaptation of his works on television.87 By contrast with the composer’s love for film, as seen in his repeated trips to the cinema and his film scores in the 1930s, Britten had more ambivalent feelings towards television. This may be partly attributed to his lack of familiarity with the new medium; he did not own a television set until the 1970s and harboured doubts about what it could do for cultural enterprise.88 These reservations may also be understood as a function of television’s novelty; neither film nor theatre, the medium was constantly in the process of updating and reconfiguring its common practices. In the 1950s alone, television production moved from live presentations to pre-taped programming; black and white to colour; and from a single studio to a two-studio set-up for musical productions. And yet, despite Britten’s concerns, a number of his operas achieved wider dissemination through television, including The Turn of the Screw (Associated-Rediffusion, 1959), The Burning Fiery Furnace (BBC, 1968), and Peter Grimes (BBC, 1969). He would also eventually accept a commission to write an opera for television, Owen Wingrave (BBC, 1971).89 The 1952 NBC production of Billy Budd marked the first time that one of the composer’s operas had been televised. It was also the premiere of Billy Budd in the United States, and it would remain the only major production until the staging of the two-act version in Chicago in 1970.90 Most impressively, it had the furthest reach of any performance of an opera by Britten: the 1952 television version attracted an audience estimated to be in the millions, a number that dwarfed the combined total of all Britten opera premieres in the United States up to that point.91 However, since the opera did not directly involve the composer—except acquiring his approval in advance—scholars have often minimized its importance when considering the production history of Billy Budd.92 Even when they discuss it, scholars have tended to focus on Britten’s reaction rather than the success of this opera on television. For instance, Britten’s comment that the NBC’s Scenes from Billy Budd was ‘badly, desperately cut’ is frequently repeated, despite the fact that he never saw the resulting television show.93 Taking Britten’s pronouncements on such productions as definitive judgements may shortchange the impact of television in circulating and shaping the performance history of these operas. These productions reveal how directors used television to re-envisage what opera could be—and how they hoped audiences would respond, both in and outside the opera house. The 1952 production of Billy Budd is a case in point: it fell within the mission of the NBC Television Opera Theatre to make opera into a taut, dramatic form that would appeal to the American public.94 Although the NBC was mainly reacting to staging trends in the United States—particularly the grand gestures and stylized staging at the Metropolitan Opera—its wish to make opera into a believable form of theatre resonated more broadly.95 Some of its goals, such as the focus on the ensemble and the English language, were even shared with Britten’s own English Opera Group. The difference was that the NBC thought that this theatrical renewal could occur through the camera.96 In fact, Billy Budd seemed to be tailor-made for television. The opera’s propensity for intimate and everyday detail translated well when it was put on the small screen, as the NBC production realized many of the televisual effects that Coleman and Piper had outlined in their article a year earlier. For instance, in the prologue, the camera dollies into the face of Vere, getting as close to the captain as Coleman had wanted. The production also includes shots from behind the head of a given character so that audience members could adopt his perspective. In the Act I, sc. i impressment episode, the camera is placed behind the heads of the two lieutenants as they discuss the find of Billy Budd, and then shifts behind Billy’s head. This shot/reverse-shot technique—adapted from the cinema—is particularly impressive given that the whole production was shot live using only four cameras. Not only are the audience members introduced to the character of Billy from the perspective of the officers, but they are also able to adopt Billy’s perspective as he assesses his situation. Similarly, in the premiere on stage, Coleman had tried to direct the audience members’ attention to the new recruit, but from the perspective of Claggart: his production score indicates that Claggart was to circle around Billy and stand behind the officers, ‘never taking his eyes off him’.97 In the TV production, this effect is achieved through a close-up of Billy’s face as Claggart watches him ominously. For the producer Samuel Chotzninoff, such close-ups were meant to substitute for the psychological insight provided by the arias.98 As the director Kirk Browning explained: A camera also helps us to see what people are thinking. Often the music will express things which the performer onstage may not be able to project the necessary distance to reach the entire theatre. But in television we can bring the viewer directly to the performer so that there is no impediment to the communication of emotion or idea.99 As in the 1951 premiere, this approach was intended to foster a confessional aesthetic, one in which the depiction of the life-sized face allowed for an intimate relationship with an unseen audience member. Scholars have often remarked upon the fact that, in trimming the opera to the required 90-minute slot of television, Chotzinoff made the decision to eliminate Claggart’s aria ‘O handsomeness, O beauty’ in Act I, sc. iii, in which he reveals his evil nature to the audience. This decision has been understood as revealing a tone-deaf producer, but this common conclusion seems to dismiss or overlook Chotzinoff’s musical background and known sensitivity for interpreting scores, as seen in his televising of the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini, as well as his production of other condensed operas for the NBC.100 Although this cut may seem egregious today, given the near-canonic status the aria later achieved, Chotzinoff’s decision at the time followed the logical imperative of naturalism, in which the intimacy and immediacy of the screen were thought to offer sufficient psychological insight into the characters. Moreover, the overriding concern about the cuts to the score has often distracted from the ways in which the camera close-ups make visible certain musical effects. For instance, during the prologue, undulating string lines outline the central struggle between B minor and B flat major that will govern the entire opera. Complementing this sense of harmonic confusion, the camera provides a fuzzy, full-sized view of Vere that only slowly comes into focus, much like how the tonal centre will gradually emerge over the course of the prologue. The camerawork also underlines musical parallelisms between the prologue and epilogue, casting doubt on the possibility of a true resolution for Vere. For instance, the prologue and epilogue end with the same ‘zooming in’ feature: in the prologue, the camera dollies into Vere’s head and shoulders, and eventually just his face, as he narrates. With the musical line consisting mainly of repeated notes sung in a parlando style, this focus on the face underscores the psychological component, reinforcing that this is a story that is being told in Vere’s mind. In the epilogue, this same camera technique is used for Vere’s concluding sentence, as he sings ‘I am an old man now’. This technique not only highlights the return of the ‘narration’ music, but seems to suggest that Vere is doomed to relive this moment, over and over again, despite the fact that he says that his ‘mind can go back in peace’ following the arrival of a triumphant B flat major chord. Paralleling the morendo marking and recalling the prologue opening, the camera eventually zooms out and fades away, leaving Vere in the fog of his memories. Not only did television producers believe that the small screen would allow greater individual character development, they also used it to help reconfigure the mass scenes. During the original stage production, the expansive, large-scale scenes—that is, those designed to be most ‘operatic’ in the grand sense of the word—were criticized. For instance, Sunday Times journalist Ernest Newman dismissed the full-scale muster of the captain and crew at the end of Act I, writing: ‘I could imagine something of this sort happening on the deck of [Gilbert and Sullivan’s] H.M.S. Pinafore, but hardly on that of H.M.S. Indomitable.’101 But even these seem to have been rectified in the NBC production, which, through its camerawork, offered greater character differentiation and delineation. As Browning put it, ‘the camera can pick out individual characters or groups of characters who, on a large stage might be lost in a maze of activity’.102 For instance, in the muster scene, the camera pans across the adoring faces of the crew before finally revealing Captain Vere on a platform above. When he sings ‘I speak to all’, the camera returns to close-ups of the faces of the crew. Later, it isolates Billy among the sailors as he makes his way to the front of the crowd to declare his love. This camera technique underscores the shift in musical texture at this point in time: rather than continuing to follow the call and response between Vere and the sailors, this close-up reinforces how Billy’s line is distinct from that of the surrounding crew, suggesting that his love for Vere exceeds that of the masses. In this context, the camera translates the music for the audience by offering a distinct point of view so that Billy is not simply swept up in the ardour of the crowd. The television production also more effectively rendered the intimate scenes in the opera, particularly those that occur in the cramped quarters below deck. Although the wider vistas may have been missed (James Hinton of the Musical Times complained that the sets ‘never left any doubt that the Indomitable was moored in a studio, and never gave any sense of space or the sea’103), the limited space of the television studio helped to replicate the sense of claustrophobia below deck. In addition to close-up shots of Billy Budd in his hammock and roughhousing with the other sailors, the production used the television screen itself as a frame. After Billy is hanged at the end of the opera, the mutinous crew move towards the camera until the screen is overflowing with faces. In this respect, the screen makes visible the ‘cramped’ musical language of the opera, which, as scholars have noted, is remarkable for its motivic density.104 This scene, in particular, is underscored by a variant of the ‘working music’ motif heard at the outset of the opera, but it is now transformed into a rough and undisciplined rising growl. Evans has suggested that this musical transformation encourages empathy not only for Billy, but for all the victims on board.105 Similarly, the television production, by allowing the individual faces to dominate the television screen, relies upon the televisual belief that nearness to the face would allow for psychological closeness. Ultimately, the purpose of this visual effect is similar to that of the music: to inspire a sense of sympathy on the part of the viewer. Despite or perhaps because of the cuts to the score, most reviewers who had seen both the 1951 production and the television one thought the NBC Billy Budd actually improved the opera and made it more ‘realistic’ and arresting than the Covent Garden premiere. They even found it better than a successful Broadway play adaptation of the novella the year before.106 For instance, Olin Downes of the New York Times had dismissed the 1951 Billy Budd, but he praised the 1952 production for personalizing the performance.107 The audience response, too, was overwhelming, both in terms of numbers and in fan mail. This reception of Billy Budd far exceeded the expectations of the NBC Opera artistic directors: in an unprecedented move, the NBC encouraged affiliate stations that had not shown the original production to screen the kinescope, and Chotzinoff tried, unsuccessfully, to offer another live televised performance of the opera.108 Apart from Amahl and the Night Visitors, this broadcast of Billy Budd would remain one of NBC’s most popular opera transmissions—and one of the most successful productions of Britten’s operas in the United States for years to come. Most importantly, the NBC’s Scenes from Billy Budd reveals how a number of the principles pursued by television corresponded with shifts in opera production onstage. As Sutcliffe’s history of opera production shows, a growing concern for ‘theatrical truth’ emerged in the mid-twentieth century, partly in reaction to the new standards of reality offered by the cinema. Sutcliffe locates this development in opera houses’ increasing attention to theatrical believability, as they changed from seeing operas as a vehicle for singers to focusing on the ensemble.109 Similarly, the NBC Opera was tapping into broader trends on stage that focused on how opera could seem like ‘real’ theatre by remaking it through the standards of the screen.110 In a letter to Olin Downes, Chotzinoff claimed that they were trying to recuperate particular theatrical principles in making opera in the television studio: ‘Our ideals for opera are like those of the Moscow Art Theatre for Drama [of Stanislavsky]. At least we are animated by the same desire to achieve “real theatre”. We do everything we can to exploit the television medium for our purpose.’111 Capitalizing upon the rising popularity of Stanislavsky’s approach to acting, as seen in the Actor’s Studio and method acting in the United States, the NBC Opera sought to transfer this approach to the screen. In their use of television naturalism, the NBC wished to inspire feeling in a large audience, albeit aided by camera techniques and close-ups. And, like the Moscow Art Theatre, the NBC Opera believed that this aesthetic would make the art form more accessible to more people. In his closing line of the letter, Chotzinoff reflected: ‘If we are successful, I think we will create a vast American public for opera in a language which they can understand.’112 Ultimately, then, the renewal of naturalism on television was intended to create an audience for opera, both on stage and on screen. Unlike the opulent productions by Visconti and Zeffirelli seen on the grand opera stage, the promotion of ‘realism’ on television was inextricably intertwined with the cultivation of intimacy. Even as its methods and techniques improved technologically and television began to be pre-recorded in the late 1950s, the cultivation of an immediate relationship between the individual actor and viewer was still central to the aesthetic. Reproducing a recognizably ‘real’ world, then, was not simply a scenic nicety, but was meant to create a connection between the world of the character and that of the viewer—and, through this, a broader operatic audience.113 BILLY BUDD AT COVENT GARDEN (1964) Despite its success on television, no new production of Billy Budd was seen on the stage or screen for the next twelve years. In the meantime, understandings of realism underwent a radical transformation, particularly in the United Kingdom. In spoken theatre, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956) ushered in a new brand of ‘kitchen-sink realism’ focused on the unvarnished rage of ‘angry young men’ against the established hierarchy. As Innes has shown, this reinvented realism was determined mainly by its ‘subject matter and authorial intention’.114 It was not enough to depict everyday life accurately; the subject being depicted needed to be one of social significance. For Hewison, this social undercurrent helped to explain the resurgence of realism in literature, as younger generations revolted against what they saw as the elitist subject matter and stylistically contrived prose of their modernist forebears in favour of social justice topics and a more gritty language.115 Along with the assumed ‘authenticity’ of such topics, the stage was regarded as a site for consciousness-raising for the middle and lower classes. In this context, realism was thought to be a more accessible aesthetic for the very classes whose struggles were being depicted.116 Perhaps unsurprisingly, this rebooted version of realism was most successful on the very medium—television—that could broadcast topical plays to large working- and middle-class audiences. In ABC’s Armchair Theatre and later in the BBC’s Wednesday Play, the Canadian drama executive Sydney Newman took television away from drawing-room domestic squabbles to explore pressing issues on the street. As Newman recollected many years later, when he arrived in the UK in the mid-1950s: ‘The only legitimate theatre was of the “anyone for tennis” variety, which on the whole gave a condescending view of working-class people. Television dramas were usually adaptations of stage plays and invariably about the upper classes. I said, “Damn the upper classes: they don’t even own televisions!”’117 Committed to a documentary-style approach, Newman produced made-for-television plays that focused on social issues, most famously homelessness in Cathy Come Home (1966).118 He also took television out of the studio and used moving cameras, thus opening up a wide variety of subjects and settings. With television drama now frequently pre-taped on film, the possibilities of multiple locations and time frames also allowed it to expand well beyond the live, interior drawing-room plays of the 1950s.119 Along with this change in content, television producers began to experiment with what has been called ‘non-naturalism’.120 Emboldened by developments in French New Wave cinema and documentary British film, a number of television producers and writers wished to move away from the theatrical premiss underpinning early television drama that had resulted in what the BBC executive John Reith had called ‘photographed stage plays’.121 In 1964, the television scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin issued a blistering attack on television naturalism in an article entitled ‘Nats Go Home’, which called for a new televisual grammar ‘to free the camera from photographing dialogue, to free the structure from natural time and to exploit the total and absolute objectivity of the television camera’.122 Martin was particularly tired of the focus on speech and called for the ‘objectivity of the television camera’ to replace the unrelenting focus on the close-up. In its place, he advocated for what he called ‘narrative drama’, which would use imagery, rather than words, to tell the story.123 Although Martin was reacting, in part, against the entrenchment of television naturalism, the suggestions he made did not spell the end of realism on screen—if anything they strengthened it by expanding its dramatic and technical arsenal. All these developments in television, the spoken stage, and film had repercussions on the reception of realism on the opera stage, as can be seen in the 1964 production of Billy Budd. Following Britten’s successful revision of Billy Budd into two acts for a 1960 radio broadcast, the opera was restaged at Covent Garden. Once again, the production was directed by Coleman, who had returned to the United Kingdom after a stint working for Newman in the television arm of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The 1964 production featured a revised set, which, at Britten’s request, John Piper had stripped down and simplified. In a letter to Piper, Britten wrote that ‘the idea is much more telling if presented in this abstracted way; I know I saw much more of the ship this time than I did before!’124 But the composer’s main concern in urging Piper to simplify the set was not with abstraction for its own sake, but rather with how it would complement the pacing of the work.125 Following the revised two-act version, the production no longer included the muster scene that had caused such critical consternation at the premiere; it was now replaced by a scene in which the crew sing about Vere. As Philip Reed has noted, this new progression of scenes increased the mystery around Vere, as we have to wait to meet the captain in his quarters.126 But it also heightened the intimacy of the work, as it now moves from one small-scale group scene to another. However, in the gritty context of Look Back in Anger and Armchair Theatre, this production of Billy Budd—no matter how stripped down and simplified—appeared somewhat artificial. Television and film, particularly the 1962 film of Billy Budd: Foretopman by Peter Ustinov, may have had an influence in this respect, as critics expected a higher degree of verisimilitude than they had in 1951. They delighted in pointing out slight breaches of navy protocol, mocked the depiction of acts of violence, and criticized Coleman’s stodgy handling of the large-scale battle scenes.127 Philip Hope-Wallace of The Guardian also put some of the blame on the venue: here as in so many Covent Garden productions, stage brutality is woefully phoney-looking. Whether it is Russian folk cowering under Czarist knouts, or, as here, Nelsonian sailors flinching and wincing before anyone has even threatened let alone hit them, the manner bespeaks HMS Pinafore rather than realistic opera.128 This criticism speaks to anxieties about Covent Garden’s role as a top-notch opera house: although the opera house had benefitted greatly from the expertise of European immigrants in the 1950s and an influx of public funds in the 1960s, there was concern about whether it was keeping pace with theatrical developments.129 Critics judged the revised production of Billy Budd according to recent innovations on the opera stage, comparing the movement of the chorus unfavourably with the large mass scenes by Zeffirelli, or noting how the minimalist ship design recalled the productions of Wieland Wagner.130 The result was a production that seemed to fall between two stools: it was not ‘gritty’ enough to be believable, but not adventurous enough to be judged according to a different theatrical yardstick. Still, there was one area in which the new production was thought to excel and this was in the staging of intimate scenes.131 Drawing upon experience he had gained directing television,132 Coleman created small groupings that realistically depicted naval life and offered different viewing perspectives. Years later, when reflecting upon the differences between television and theatre, he noted that ‘when you do things from theatre it’s all viewed in one aspect. In television you take the viewer right into the action and you can show it at all different angles, as it were.’133 Despite his concern with the limitations of the theatre, Coleman’s vocal score shows how he tried to achieve different viewing angles on stage; in his production score, he inserted a number of loose-leaf pages with very specific details for the movement of individual singers in small groups. For instance, before the impressment scene, Coleman’s production score instructs ‘Claggart [to] appear in shadows of underdeck, waiting’.134 Like the close-ups in the 1952 production, this below-deck scene was meant to bring out the predatory psychology of the man-at-arms by refocusing the audience’s attention on him—and his perspective. Whereas the 1951 production score had sought to align musical cues with a corresponding stage portrayal, the 1964 production was more focused on depicting the pathos of the situation—particularly through the characters’ movements and even facial expressions. For example, in the penultimate scene when Billy awaits his execution, he is instructed to act ‘frightened’, ‘sway forward for comfort’, ‘half turn away to disguise his tears’, and ‘even try to wipe away the tears’ (see Pl. 2).135 These visual cues all occur during the staccato piccolo semiquaver notes that interrupt each of Billy’s statements, piercing his calm acceptance of death. Of course, given that these moments are not sung, they would have been the most convenient for such acting cues, but they also underline the musical ambiguity of this scene, as Billy struggles to accept his fate. In the 1951 production notes for this corresponding scene, no such cues are given, with the exception of a cryptic note that Billy’s ‘confidence [should be] going again’ as he reflects upon his upcoming death.136 In the 1964 version, Coleman explained exactly how to achieve this effect, and, in turn, elicit a sympathetic response from the audience. Pl. 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Act II, penultimate scene, Basil Coleman’s Production Score (Two-Act), Box 4, Coleman Archive, Britten-Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh, UK (p. 300). ‘Billy Budd, Op. 50’ Benjamin Britten, Eric Crozier, Edward Forester © 1951, 1952 By Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission Pl. 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Act II, penultimate scene, Basil Coleman’s Production Score (Two-Act), Box 4, Coleman Archive, Britten-Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh, UK (p. 300). ‘Billy Budd, Op. 50’ Benjamin Britten, Eric Crozier, Edward Forester © 1951, 1952 By Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission Curiously enough, Coleman’s vocal score—recently deposited at the Britten–Pears Library—seems to have been used for both the 1964 stage performance and the later 1966 television production, thus demonstrating the overlap between the conceptions of stage and screen. It is interesting to note how little these directions were changed; there are no erasure marks and, with the exception of the camera directions for the interlude (described below), none of the acting directions in the production score was obviously added later for the television production. Of course, it is impossible to know whether all the markings written in the score were used in the stage production or written in for the television production. Still, the fact that Coleman’s overall perspective could be maintained, even as Billy Budd moved from the opera house to the television studio, shows to what extent he was already thinking in televisual terms. Creating an affective operatic production, then, was no longer only a task for the stage, but was to be constituted through the standards of the screen. THE BBC PRODUCTION (1966) In fact, it was the 1964 stage production of Billy Budd that convinced Newman to make a version for BBC television. With its subject of impressment and its motley crew, Billy Budd fulfilled Newman’s preference for stories dealing with oppression and lower-class characters. Most importantly, the BBC seized upon the opera’s potential for ‘realistic’ portrayal and attempted to create a more true-to-scale representation of the ship than seen in any previous production. In an article for the BBC staff magazine, Ariel, the stage designer Tony Abbott wrote: ‘One great advantage was the fact that we could if we wished provide a more realistic set than the theatre presentation. The opera being about life on board a ship, the more realistic the design becomes the better.’137 As with the 1951 production, there was a focus on historical accuracy: the designer visited the HMS Victory and the Greenwich Maritime Museum and the BBC even provided a naval historian for consultation.138 The set was also designed so as to accommodate various camera perspectives on the main deck and in the Captain’s cabin.139 Directed once more by Coleman, the BBC production combined this incredible attention to detail with a degree of visual virtuosity unprecedented for television opera. Billy Budd’s confinement to a ship allowed for the exploitation of new technology, specifically the in-depth moving cameras that had been Newman’s trademark in Armchair Theatre.140 It thus shows how television technology had evolved: unlike the NBC’s live, four-camera broadcast in 1952, the BBC pre-recorded the opera using as many as six cameras, the maximum permitted at that time.141 The BBC production also used two studios, one for the orchestra and another for the singers, allowing for greater movement around the set. In using these cameras, the production adhered to Martin’s new televisual grammar: it allowed the camera to move, it did not photograph dialogue, and it was not confined to natural time. In an interview with Radio Times, Coleman remarked upon how ‘there are times when the camera follows the action in a great sweep, maybe from poop deck to lower deck, so that the viewer is given almost a cross-section of the entire ship’.142 The greater freedom of the camera also allowed for a wider variety of perspectives. For instance, the first scene shows the dizzying point of view from up high on the mast, as well as a cross-section of the ship. Not only did the production retain what Martin called the ‘objectivity of the camera’ in surveying the ship, but it did so in a dynamic way that brought the viewer into the action itself. At the same time, the production still underlined the psychological dimension of the opera. Echoing Piper, Abbott remarked that ‘the opera takes place within the Captain’s mind and the only thing which is real to him is his ship and the world of men within her’.143 Like in the 1952 NBC production, this perspective is initially brought out in the prologue, as the Captain directly addresses the camera in a manner reminiscent of fireside television narrators. But it is taken a step further following the introduction of Captain Vere, played by Peter Pears, in his cabin, in the Act I interlude between scenes ii and iii. Coleman created flashbacks, cutting between shots of the depiction of Vere as an old man and that of Vere in the ship. The flashbacks all feature identifiable everyday objects, like paintings and a book, and occur in definite locations—the old man’s study and the captain’s quarters—to show the audience that the entire story is being recalled by an old man. The abundance of detail is not an impediment to the psychological dimension; rather, it is meant to provide triggers for Vere’s mind, allowing the audience to accompany him as he relives his past experiences in the present. Despite its use of extensive editing techniques, this scene, then, still relied on the basic premiss underscoring naturalism in television: it equated detailed close-ups with psychological insight. Even more innovative was the scene’s treatment of time. Operatic music—particularly the instrumental interlude—has often posed a problem for television. As Christopher Morris has noted, such productions must ‘obey the unwritten rule of film and video, that the screen should never go dark, that there should always be an image’.144 Compounding matters, the representation of time on stage often does not align with the ‘natural’ time of television. Emanuele Senici has characterized this dilemma as the ‘gap between represented time and performance time’: television, even a pre-recorded programme, is thought to be occurring in real time, but opera is known for its periods of musical reflection in arias.145 But this meant that putting opera on television could result in a disjointed relationship with television naturalism, in which ‘represented time should be as close as possible to performance time’.146 As a result, opera may be experienced as a more static form of presentation and its most potent moments, such as arias and, in the case of Britten’s works, instrumental interludes, may fail to capture the attention of a television audience. This temporal gap has often been blamed for the lack of success in translating opera for television.147 However, this assessment of the incompatibility of opera and television does not apply as well to mid-1960s Britain, as directors and scriptwriters began to challenge the equation of represented and performance time on screen. In Martin’s vision, for instance, he compared television to a novel or poem and suggested that ‘with a new punctuation, Time can go back, forward, jump or be distorted’.148 In order to show the advantages of this new approach, he sketched out a scene for the death of the hero, in which twenty-five cuts of different shots would be combined to create a slow motion fall that would ‘look like a drawn out moment of horror’.149 With the development of pre-recorded television in the late 1950s, such editing allowed television to create a scene that might take longer, but would not necessarily feel longer to the television viewer. According to Martin, this time distortion should allow the viewer to feel as if he experienced this fall, rather than just saw it. Ultimately, then, the abandonment of ‘represented time’ was meant to allow for a more absorbing experience for the viewer. In this respect, it abides by the logic of hypermediacy as described by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, in which the layering of different kinds of mediation upon one another was in the pursuit of a kind of immediacy beyond that which could be experienced live.150 Similarly, the interlude between sc. ii and iii of Act I relies on editing techniques, including spliced footage and a slow-motion effect, to provide an arresting experience for the television viewer. In this scene, performance time does not map clearly onto any represented time, but rather conflates different temporal dimensions, reminding the viewer that the bulk of the opera is occurring in the mind of Captain Vere. The interlude begins with the captain holding a book, recalling the prologue in which old Vere used the same prop. Like a memory, the flashbacks in the scenes are out of order, as they operate in their own temporal and spatial dimension. Later, as called for in the production score, the film uses panning and tracking shots, as well as cross-fading, to mirror the actions of the young and old Vere (Pl. 3). The sense of time here not only conflates past and present but also plays with the sense of space, as scenes in quick succession show old Vere in the study (framed by a painting of a ship over the mantelpiece) alternating with shots of Captain Vere on the deck, before a fade-out to the below-decks (see Pll. 4 and 5). These cuts also correspond with the music, as the shifts become more frequent in the section marked ‘animato’ with demisemiquaver swells in the orchestra, thus attuning the viewer to the quicker pacing of the music. At the same time, the movements of old Vere are in slow motion, almost as though suspended, while his mind skips between different memories of his younger days. Like the ‘death of the hero’ scene described by Martin, the viewer should not notice that the experience of time is elongated; instead, he or she is to be transported into the very experience of remembering, in which represented time does not march in lockstep with performance time. In this way, the producers of Billy Budd combined new temporal techniques with the presumed immediacy and intimacy of the medium to offer not only a visual accompaniment to the interlude, but the kind of experiential realism proliferating across television.151 Pl. 3 Open in new tabDownload slide Act I interlude between scenes ii and iii, Basil Coleman’s Production Score (Two-Act), Box 4, Coleman Archive, Britten–Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh, UK (pp. 104–5). ‘Billy Budd, Op. 50’ Benjamin Britten, Eric Crozier, Edward Forester © 1951, 1952 By Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission Pl. 3 Open in new tabDownload slide Act I interlude between scenes ii and iii, Basil Coleman’s Production Score (Two-Act), Box 4, Coleman Archive, Britten–Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh, UK (pp. 104–5). ‘Billy Budd, Op. 50’ Benjamin Britten, Eric Crozier, Edward Forester © 1951, 1952 By Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission Pl. 4 Open in new tabDownload slide Old Vere in study, Act I, scene ii (interlude), Billy Budd (BBC, 1966) Pl. 4 Open in new tabDownload slide Old Vere in study, Act I, scene ii (interlude), Billy Budd (BBC, 1966) Pl. 5. Open in new tabDownload slide Captain Vere on deck, Act I, scene ii (interlude), Billy Budd (BBC, 1966) Pl. 5. Open in new tabDownload slide Captain Vere on deck, Act I, scene ii (interlude), Billy Budd (BBC, 1966) The 1966 production of Billy Budd was a great success, winning a Television Opera Award, leading to the televising of Peter Grimes in 1969 and inspiring Britten to write Owen Wingrave in 1971.152 Coleman also received accolades from the theatre world, with one prominent British agent writing: ‘I just hope that every theatrical manager in London saw the production and read today’s notices.’153 In one particularly glowing letter, Gerald Savoy, the Head of Plays at the BBC, wrote about how television helped to bring the opera’s modes into focus: Although I had seen it before it was with a large crowd and it was not until last night that it came into perspective … when two or three are gathered together in their own homes. How wonderfully gripping it was! I couldn’t see that you put a wrong foot forward anywhere—such a forceful step, and how you made them act, and what a wealth of visual detail—there seemed to be no chorus, only a gathering of varied individuals.154 Even though Billy Budd is classified as a grand opera, Savoy argued that by changing the conditions of reception, the most effective experience of this opera could be best achieved. Denis Foreman of Granada Television agreed, suggesting that the BBC production ‘was a definitive version of the opera—whether it was for stage, television or film was irrelevant’, adding that it was ‘truer to the score and to the spirit of the libretto and infinitely more compulsive than the original Covent Garden production’.155 Other commentators, including the reviewer for Music and Musicians, concluded that television was the best medium for the opera: This work has proved awkward to stage in the theatre, because of the virtually insuperable problem of recreating the enclosed, claustrophobic atmosphere of a crowded man o’ war on a larger open stage. On television no such problem exists and in this production Budd was transformed into the musico-dramatic masterpiece that the score has always declared it to be, but which Coleman’s own Covent Garden production seemed in some ways to deny.156 Curiously, these critics seemed to imply that the true nature of Billy Budd, then, was not a large-scale opera planned for Covent Garden, but rather an intimate one. This idea was put forth explicitly by the reviewer in Tempo, who suggested that the spatial intimacies mapped onto the musical ones: ‘it matched for the first time in my experience the chamber aspects of a work which although a masterpiece on a grand scale is somehow beholden in its intimacies (often reflected in the orchestral manner) to the experience of Lucretia or Herring’.157 Such assessments may complicate our understanding of the opera’s position in Britten’s catalogue: it becomes possible to reimagine Billy Budd’s psychological drama as a follow-up to his earlier chamber operas and a worthy predecessor to The Turn of the Screw.158 Still, this line of thinking must be pursued with caution; the 1966 production of Billy Budd was not the only television opera production to receive such accolades. In fact, many television opera productions, including Britten’s Burning Fiery Furnace, Peter Grimes, and Owen Wingrave, were praised for bringing out the intimate dimensions of the operas they televised.159 Instead, these comments can be read in a more generalized way, as critics sought out an absorbing aesthetic believed to elude the vast grand opera stage. In this context, each television opera performance was not only a referendum on the new medium, but also a barely veiled debate about the impact of opera onstage—and its ability to continue to attract audiences. For instance, Stephen Walsh noted that the BBC production of Billy Budd ‘highlighted its psychological subtleties in a way that the live stage never could’, while Anthony Payne argued that the camera ‘evoke[d] more powerfully than is ever the case in the opera house the confining world of the ship [since it] never allowed one to see it in detached perspective with a long shot, never wandered outside the ship’s aura’.160 The small screen was thought to allow a kind of access to the opera that the stage, with its distant perspective and opera glasses, was sometimes thought to deny. By showing how Billy Budd could be made into an arresting performance, then, television promised to reveal how perhaps all opera could be made into a more immediate and ‘real’ experience on screen. CONCLUSION: REALISM TODAY Following the BBC production, Billy Budd enjoyed a new period of popularity, with stage productions in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States.161 And yet, even as the compressed two-act version has made it more attractive to opera houses, the staging and reception of the opera have still been dominated by the question of realism first posed by Piper and Coleman. Following their lead, many productions have continued to combine a semi-naturalistic set and period costumes against a stark or black backdrop.162 One of these productions, Ande Anderson’s 1978 version at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, even reverted back to the 1951 premiere’s design.163 Others, including the renowned 1978 Metropolitan Opera production by John Dexter, have been lauded for their technological advances, which have, nonetheless, been put to work in revealing an ever more realistically detailed ship.164 Most recently, Deborah Warner’s production of Billy Budd was praised for its ‘unvarnished literality’ and ‘naturalism’, with some reviewers criticizing the mix of realistic elements from different time periods.165 Even those productions that buck the trend are understood through their opposition to it. For instance, The Guardian reviewer celebrated David Alden’s 2012 production at the English National Opera, set in the early twentieth century, for avoiding the ‘clutter of the Patrick O’Brian-style naturalism that is so regularly replicated in productions of Budd’.166 This same production was praised by Anthony Tommasini for its ‘psychological, not scenic, realism’, showing how the extent to which a production feels ‘real’ remains an abiding concern.167 This critical parsing of the different kinds of realism is also customary, with the assumption that a ‘literal’ kind of realism dominated the original production and that a ‘psychological’ realism can redeem it.168 But perhaps a better way to understand the strains of realism seen in these productions is to consider what they were trying to signal to audiences. As previously discussed, television naturalism was an attempt to access a kind of immediacy, which was thought to originate from the medium itself. The idea was that direct communication with an audience in the here-and-now was executed through manoeuvres meant to bring the viewer closer to the actor, that is, to increase intimacy. Propelled by similar concerns, the operatic stage adopted not only the aesthetic of television, but, it was hoped, its attendant effects on the audience. Kirk points to the short works of Menotti as emblematic of this trend, but it can also be seen in how the style of operatic productions was reworked in and through television.169 At the same time, the turn towards ‘realism’ corresponds with other attempts to ensure the survival of opera precisely by making it less ‘operatic’ in the grand sense of the word.170 Despite its status as a grand opera premiered at Covent Garden, Billy Budd was frequently criticized for not being ‘operatic’ enough or being ‘operatic’ in the wrong way.171 As Abbate and Parker have argued, composers, including Britten, evinced an increasing discomfort with the grand operatic aesthetic in the latter half of the twentieth century, frequently shunting the voice aside in favour of the orchestra, as seen in the ‘closed door’ scene with the thirty-four chords in Billy Budd.172 Abbate and Parker suggest that these moments not only show a waning belief in the power of operatic singing, but seem to reveal a broader embarrassment about the excessive tendencies of opera itself. On the visual side, recurring attempts at making opera production more ‘realistic’ can be seen as stemming from a similar impulse: television producers believed that the greater the realism, the more opera could be marketed and accepted as a kind of ‘straight play’ with music.173 These efforts reveal not only an anxiety about opera as an art form, but also a strange, and perhaps counter-productive, aim to remake opera for new audiences precisely by making it less recognizably ‘operatic’. When we discuss ‘realism’, then, we are not only discussing a particular approach to stage production, but rather grappling with knotty questions about the nature of opera and how best to ensure its survival. In fact, if we think back to the definitions of ‘realism’ at the beginning of this article, we can see how ‘realism’ is a reaction, not only to the stage, but to the changing world surrounding it. Any survey of ‘realism’ reveals that the jargon of realism is tied to the defence of a theatrical style that allows each new production to invalidate the ‘truth’ of the previous one. The same, perhaps, could be said of the ways in which we tell the history of opera production, constantly finding greater ‘truth’ in those productions that are most disruptive to the ways in which we think about the stage and most in tune with our own understanding of reality today.174 But our scholarly tendency to focus on disruption may blind us to how we often recycle the very rhetoric through which realism reconstitutes itself as new. In other words, in rejecting older forms of realism, we often fail to see how the very practice of ‘realism’ was an attempt to make the stage more responsive to the world at the time. In discussing the history of early television, Caughie argued: ‘we can no longer accept the easy contempt for naturalism and the consequent automatic approval of whatever its opposite is taken to be’.175 This advice could serve equally well for our understanding of opera productions, both past and present. Instead of dismissing ‘realism’ in the mid-twentieth century, we would do better to investigate how it allowed for new ways of repositioning, experiencing, and reinventing opera on the stage and screen. Footnotes 1 Basil Coleman and John Piper, ‘Billy Budd on the Stage’, Tempo, 21 (1951), 21–5 at 21. 2 Mervyn Cooke, ‘Stage History and Critical Reception’, in Mervyn Cooke and Philip Reed (eds.), Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd (Cambridge, 1993), 135–49. 3 Ibid. For discussion of realism in more recent productions of Billy Budd, see e.g. George Hall, ‘Billy Budd: Glyndebourne Festival Opera’, The Guardian, 12 Aug. 2013; Tom Tollett, ‘Opera North: Billy Budd’, The State of the Arts, 31 Oct. 2016; David Karlin, ‘Flawless Tragedy, almost Unbearable: Billy Budd at Glyndebourne’, bachtrack.com, 11 Aug. 2013; Michael Church, ‘Billy Budd in a Triumphant Glyndebourne Revival by Michael Grandage’, The Independent, 12 Aug. 2013; Anthony Tommasini, ‘Rectitude and Desire, Both at Sea’, New York Times, 9 Feb. 2014; Fernando Remiro, ‘Deborah Warner’s Billy Budd sets a new standard in Madrid’, bachtrack.com, 6 Feb. 2017. 4 On the various systems of opera, see Pierluigi Petrobelli, ‘More on the Three “Systems”: The First Act of La forza del destino’, in Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers, trans. Roger Parker (Princeton, 1994), 127–40. 5 For the perspective of Britten’s close friend and editor, Donald Mitchell, on such realism, see Donald Mitchell, ‘A Billy Budd Notebook’, in Cooke and Reed (eds.), Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd, 111–34 at 111–12. 6 See e.g. Tyrone Guthrie, A Life in the Theatre (London, 1959), 226; Paul Kildea, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century (London, 2013), 307–8; Anthony Tommasini, ‘Rule those Bloody Waves: Britten’s Billy Budd at the English National Opera’, New York Times, 25 July 2012. 7 Arman Schwartz, ‘Rough Music: Tosca and Verismo Reconsidered’, 19th-Century Music, 31 (2008), 228–44 at 230–4. 8 For more of the press’s reaction to the contemporary operatic scene, see David J. Levin, Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky (Chicago, 2007), 24–6. In his analysis of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, Levin identifies these camps and complicates the binaries underpinning much opera criticism (pp. 44–9). As pertains to Billy Budd, see Church, ‘Billy Budd in a Triumphant Glyndebourne Revival’; Ismene Brown, ‘Billy Budd, English National Opera’, The Arts Desk, 19 June 2012; Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 302–8. 9 This was the term used by director Eric Crozier to describe the first production of Peter Grimes. Eric Crozier, ‘Staging First Productions I’, in David Herbert (ed.), The Operas of Benjamin Britten (New York, 1979), 24–33 at 26. 10 There has been much criticism of this idea of fulfilling the composer’s intentions, particularly in opera, where the intentions of multiple creators may be at odds. For an overview, see Roger Parker, Remaking the Song: Operatic Visions and Revisions from Handel to Berio (Berkeley, 2006), 1–21. 11 Guthrie, A Life in the Theatre, 226; Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 308. 12 ‘What is needed from a stage director is adequate support for – or no distraction from – the presentation of the drama in human terms.’ Philip Brett, ‘Breaking the Ice for British Opera: Peter Grimes on Stage’, in Philip Brett (ed.), Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes (Cambridge, 1983), 88–104 at 97. 13 As early as 1950, 9 per cent of American homes had television and, by 1960, this number had risen to 87 per cent. Christopher R. Sterling and Timothy R. Haight, The Mass Media: Aspen Institute Guide to Communication Industry Trends (New York, 1978), 372. Other sources suggest that by 1959 anywhere between 77 to 91 per cent of all American homes had a television, depending on the region. Nielsen statistics quoted in Wilbur Schramm (ed.), Mass Communications (Urbana, Ill., 1960), 458. In the United Kingdom, television ownership rose from 40 per cent in 1955 to 89 per cent by 1963. Timothy O’Sullivan, ‘Television Memories and Cultures of Viewing’, in John Corner (ed.), Popular Television in Britain: Studies in Cultural History (London, 1991), 159–81 at 161. 14 For more on the theatrical roots of early television aesthetics, see Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, 2nd edn. (London, 2008), 10–43. 15 These early advocates included Herbert Graf, Peter Herman Adler, and Samuel Chotzinoff in the USA, as well as Basil Coleman and Brian Large in the UK. 16 Britten’s opera was far from the only adaptation of Billy Budd: the original Herman Melville tale had been published in a new edition in 1942, spawning a quickly forgotten one-act opera by Giorgio Ghedini (premiered in 1949 at La Fenice, Venice), a popular Broadway play called Billy Budd (originally titled Uniform of Flesh) by Louis O. Coxe and Richard Chapman (premiered Feb. 1951 at the Biltmore Theatre, New York), a Canadian television production called Billy Budd starring William Shatner (CBC 1955), and Billy Budd: Foretopman, a film adapted by Peter Ustinov and Coxe from the stage play (produced by Cinemascope, Nov. 1962). Britten was aware of Ghedini’s opera and had even met the composer in 1949. Boosey & Hawkes secured a copy of the libretto for Eric Crozier, who served as one of the librettists for Britten’s Billy Budd. The composer also received a brief report of the text and music by Boosey & Hawkes’ Erwin Stein. Philip Reed, ‘From First Thoughts to First Night: A Billy Budd Chronology’, in Cooke and Reed (eds.), Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd, 42–73 at 57–8. 17 In the foreword to Tom Sutcliffe’s Believing in Opera, opera manager Matthew A. Epstein writes that ‘an ongoing critical conservatism has always made it very difficult for operatic interpretation to move forward as it has been able to do on the European continent’ and suggests that ‘we in the USA are even more conservative in our view of opera as interpretative theatre, and are still mired at least a decade behind the British scene’. Quoted in Tom Sutcliffe, Believing in Opera (Princeton, 1996), p. xiv. For his part, Sutcliffe classifies the 1940s and 1950s as the ‘pre-history of modern operatic production’ in the United Kingdom (ibid., 19). In The Gilded Stage, Daniel Snowman focuses on operatic innovations in East German theatres and notes the conservatism of American houses. Daniel Snowman, The Gilded Stage: A Social History of Opera (London, 2009), 405. 18 See, for instance, John Piper, ‘Designing for Britten’, in David Herbert (ed.), The Operas of Benjamin Britten (New York, 1979), 5–7 at 6; Basil Coleman, ‘Producing Britten’s Operas’, typescript article, Box 26, Coleman Archive, Britten–Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh, UK (henceforth BPF); Guthrie, A Life in the Theatre, 226. 19 Christopher Innes and Maria Shevtsova, The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (Cambridge, 2013), 66. 20 Julia A. Walker, ‘Naturalism and Expressionism in American Drama’, in Jeffrey H. Richards with Heather S. Nathans (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of American Drama (Oxford, 2014), 264–79 at 264–5. 21 Mark Fearnow, ‘A New Realism’, in Richards with Nathans (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of American Drama, 173–88 at 174. 22 Raymond Williams, ‘Realism and Non-Naturalism’, Official Programme of the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Aug. 1977, p. 37. 23 Christopher Innes, Modern British Drama, 1890–1990 (Cambridge, 1992), 4. 24 John Caughie, Television Drama: Realism, Modernism, and British Culture (Oxford, 2000), 69. 25 Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years (New York, 2012), 397; Schwartz, ‘Rough Music’, 230–3; Heather Wiebe, ‘The Rake’s Progress as Opera Museum’, Opera Quarterly, 25 (2009), 6–27 at 21. 26 For such praise of realism in Billy Budd, see e.g. Hall, ‘Billy Budd: Glyndebourne Festival Opera’; Tollett, ‘Opera North: Billy Budd’; Karlin, ‘Flawless Tragedy’; Church, ‘Billy Budd’; Tommasini, ‘Rectitude and Desire’. 27 Abbate and Parker, A History of Opera, 397. 28 Schwartz, ‘Rough Music’, 231–3. Alexandra Wilson has also noted the ways in which Puccini’s Tosca was thought to exclude music in its aim to be ‘realistic’. Alexandra Wilson, The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity (Cambridge, 2007), 85–6. 29 Elise K. Kirk, American Opera (Urbana, Ill., 2001), 253–71. 30 W. H. Auden, ‘Cav and Pag’, in The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (New York, 1962), 475–82 at 478. 31 W. H. Auden, ‘Notes on Music and Opera’, in ibid., 465–74 at 469. 32 Ibid. 470. 33 For more on Wagner and naturalism on stage, see Levin, Unsettling Opera, 39–43. 34 For more on these experiments, see Roger Savage et al. ‘Production’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Grove Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com accessed 27 July 2017. 35 For instance, in discussing Wagner and naturalism, Levin notes that ‘if in 1843, when Der fliegender Holländer premiered, naturalism was a radical (and, at the time, unrealizable) alternative to an entrenched and generic operatic opulence, by the time the Kroll Opera staged the work in 1929, it had in turn become the entrenched and generic norm’. Levin, Unsettling Opera, 42. 36 For more on these styles, see Simon Williams, ‘Opera and Modes of Theatrical Production’, in Nicholas Till (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies (Cambridge, 2012), 137–58 at 150–6; Savage, ‘Production’. 37 Britten’s own comments about the opera helped to promote this association, as he claimed that he ‘wanted to express my awareness of the perpetual struggle of men and women whose livelihood depends on the sea’. Benjamin Britten, ‘Introduction’ (1945), reprinted in Philip Brett (ed.), Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes (Cambridge, 1983), 148–9 at 148. Britten’s message, however, was inconsistent and he later told Guthrie, who was preparing a new production of Grimes, that ‘it’s got nothing to do with the sea. It has to do with the people in the village.’ Tony said, ‘But Ben, the sea made the people what they were’, and Ben replied, ‘No, these people would be the same wherever they were’. Quoted in Brett, ‘Breaking the Ice’, 97. The extent to which the environment determines the characters has been explored in scholarship, including, among others, Stephen Arthur Allen, ‘“He descended into Hell”: Peter Grimes, Ellen Orford and Salvation Denied’, in Mervyn Cooke (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (Cambridge, 1999), 81–94; and Philip Brett, ‘Britten and Grimes’, reprinted in Philip Brett (ed.), Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes (Cambridge, 1983), 180–9. 38 On the contrast between Britten’s music and his visual aesthetic, see Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 304–7; Brett claimed that ‘The issue for Britten in both Grimes and Budd was one not of realism, naturalism or abstraction in production, but of the interplay of character. The sea is graphically enough portrayed in the music of Grimes, as is the ship-on-the-sea in Budd, to need no further emphasis from anyone.’ See Brett, ‘Breaking the Ice for British Opera’, 96–7. 39 Paul Kildea, ‘The Shock of Exile’, in Vicki B. Stroeher and Justin Vickers (eds.), Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on an Inexplicit Art (Woodbridge, 2017), 18–32 at 31. 40 In The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera, Mervyn Cooke points to statements by Kurt London, Siegfried Kracauer, and Leonid Sabaneev that pit the theatricality of opera against the naturalism of the screen. Mervyn Cooke, ‘Opera and Film’, in idem (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera (Cambridge, 2005), 267–90 at 272. 41 A full survey of this relationship is beyond the scope of this article. See, for instance, Marcia Citron, Opera on Screen (New Haven, 2000), 24–40; Jeongwon Joe, Opera as Soundtrack (Dorchester, 2013), 1–29; Michal Grover-Friedlander, Vocal Apparitions: The Attraction of Cinema to Opera (Princeton, 2005), 20–32; Mervyn Cooke, ‘Stage and Screen’, in A History of Film Music (Cambridge, 2008), 131–82. 42 For more on these directors’ connection to film, see Citron, Opera on Screen, 34–5 and 71–2; Joe, Opera as Soundtrack, 114–15; Michal Grover-Friedlander, ‘The Afterlife of Maria Callas’s Voice’, in Operatic Afterlives (New York, 2011), 45–75. 43 Sutcliffe argues that ‘the decorative naturalism of the Visconti school … dominated, in a refreshing but essentially conservative vein, the post-war tradition of opera staging’ (Believing in Opera, 103). 44 For a summary of these positions, see Jennifer Barnes, Television Opera: The Fall of Opera Commissioned for Television (Woodbridge, 2003), 7–10. 45 Auslander, Liveness, 10–24. 46 Jason Jacobs, The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama (Oxford, 2000), 132. 47 Ibid. 117–38. 48 For more on this ideology, see Trisha Dunleavy, Television Drama: Form, Agency, Innovation (Basingstoke, 2009); Jacobs, The Intimate Screen; Caughie, Television Drama. 49 Caughie, ‘Before the Golden Age’, in John Corner (ed.), Popular Television in Britain: Studies in Cultural History (London, 1991), 22–41 at 40. 50 Caughie, Television Drama, 101. 51 See e.g. Herbert Graf, Opera for the People (New York, 1973), 223–31, and Peter Herman Adler, ‘Opera on Television’, Musical America, 72 (1952), 29. 52 Early television operas include Amahl and the Night Visitors (NBC, 1951), Bohuslav Martinů’s The Marriage (NBC, 1953), and Norman Dello Joio’s The Trial at Rouen (NBC, 1956). For a full list see Barnes, Television Opera, Appendix, 103–4. 53 Kirk, American Opera, 242. 54 For more on the English Opera Group, see Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 276–83 and Justin Vickers, ‘An Empire Built on Shingle: Britten, the English Opera Group, and the Aldeburgh Festival’, in Stroeher and Vickers (eds.), Benjamin Britten Studies, 89–176. 55 For more on the commissions for the Festival of Britain, see Nathaniel Lew, Tonic to the Nation: Making English Music in the Festival of Britain (New York, 2017). For more details on the negotiations between the Arts Council and Britten, see Kildea, Selling Britten, 128–31; Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed (eds.), Letters from a Life: Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, iii: 1946–51 (London, 2004), 562–7. 56 E. M. Forster to Benjamin Britten, 20 Dec. 1948, quoted in Philip Reed, ‘From First Thoughts to First Night’, in Cooke and Reed (eds.), Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd, 42–73 at 46. 57 Mervyn Cooke, ‘Herman Melville’s Billy Budd’, in Cooke and Reed (eds.), Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd, 15–26 at 16–17. 58 Clifford Hindley has noted that the importance of fate was underscored in William Plomer’s preface to the novella in the edition used by Britten and his librettists. Clifford Hindley, ‘Eros in Life and Death: Billy Budd and Death in Venice’, in Cooke (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, 147–66 at 149. 59 Cooke, ‘Herman Melville’s Billy Budd’, 22–5. 60 Forster to Britten, 20 Dec. 1948. 61 Ibid. 62 It is not clear exactly what changed Forster’s mind; much of the work on the libretto was done face-to-face at Britten’s home in Aldeburgh so few letters survive from this period. 63 Eric Crozier, ‘The British Navy in 1797’, Tempo, 21 (1951), 9–11. My italics. 64 Reed, ‘From First Thoughts to First Night’, 49–50. 65 Coleman and Piper, ‘Billy Budd on the Stage’, 21. 66 Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 305. 67 Coleman and Piper, ‘Billy Budd on the Stage’, 21. 68 Ibid. 69 Andrew Porter, ‘Billy Budd’, Music & Letters, 33 (1952), 111–18 at 113. 70 Coleman and Piper, ‘Billy Budd on the Stage’, 24. 71 Philip Rupprecht, Britten’s Musical Language (Cambridge, 2001), 129. In ch. 22, Melville writes: ‘Beyond the communication of the sentence, what took place at this interview was never known. But in view of the character of the twain briefly closeted in that stateroom, each radically sharing in the rarer qualities of our nature … some conjectures may be ventured.’ 72 Peter Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten (London, 1979), 168; Arnold Whittall, ‘“Twisted Relations”: Method and Meaning in Britten’s Billy Budd’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 2 (1990), 145–71 at 156; Rupprecht, Britten’s Musical Language, 99. That is not to say that no connections can be made: Mervyn Cooke has noted that all thirty-two chords harmonize one of the notes of a F major triad. Within the tonal symbolism of the work, this key supplants Claggart’s key of F minor and functions as a dominant to B flat major, which in turn serves as the key of salvation and battles with B minor to be the opera’s tonic. In this context, the interview chords hint at a coming salvation. Mervyn Cooke, ‘Britten’s “Prophetic Song”’, in Cooke and Reed (eds.), Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd, 85–110 at 102–3. This effect, however, is deduced far below the surface of the sound: on a first hearing, the very elemental nature of the passage may dominate. For more on this scene, see Claire Seymour, The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion (Woodbridge, 2004), 150–3; Clifford Hindley, ‘Love and Salvation in Britten’s “Billy Budd”’, Music & Letters, 70 (1989), 363–81; Philip Brett, ‘Salvation at Sea’, in Christopher Palmer (ed.), The Britten Companion (London, 1984), 133–43. 73 Whittall, ‘Twisted Relations’, 156; Rupprecht, Britten’s Musical Language, 131. 74 In ‘Billy Budd on Stage’, Coleman says: ‘Britten has stressed very much the importance of the end of this scene. The orchestra alone describes the interview which takes place between Vere and Billy.’ Coleman and Piper, ‘Billy Budd on Stage’, 24. 75 E. J. Dent to Benjamin Britten, 10 Dec. 1951, reprinted in Mitchell, Reed, and Cooke (eds.), Letters from a Life, iii. 702. By contrast, Auden believed that such orchestral interludes do little for audiences. In a 1951 article in Tempo published before the premiere, Auden wrote: ‘an opera-lover will put up with and even enjoy an orchestral interlude on condition that he knows the singers cannot sing just now because they are tired or the scene-shifters are at work, but any use of the orchestra by itself which is not filling-in time is, for him, wasting it’. W. H. Auden, ‘Some Reflections on Opera as a Medium’, Tempo, 20 (1951), 6–10 at 9, reprinted as Auden, ‘Notes on Music and Opera’, 465–74 at 472. Britten saw this article by his former collaborator while he was putting the finishing touches on Billy Budd and dismissed it as ‘memorably inane remarks’. Britten to Eric Walter White, 22 Aug. 1951, in Mitchell, Reed, and Cooke (eds.), Letters from a Life, iii. 674. 76 Coleman and Piper, ‘Billy Budd on Stage’, 21. 77 Cooke, ‘Stage History and Critical Reception’, 136. 78 Eric Blom, ‘Britten’s Billy Budd’, The Observer, 2 Dec. 1951. 79 See e.g. Mervyn Cooke, A History of Film Music (Cambridge, 2008), 275–78; David Crilly, ‘Britten and the Cinematic Frame’, in Lucy Walker (ed.), Benjamin Britten: New Perspectives on his Life and Work (Woodbridge, 2009), 56–72. 80 Coleman and Piper, ‘Billy Budd on the Stage’, 22. 81 Ibid. 82 According to Kate Harris, only 126,567 people had licences for televisions in the United Kingdom in 1949. By 1955, over four and a half million licences had been purchased. Kate Harris, ‘Evolutionary Stages: Theatre and Television, 1946–56’, in Dominic Shellard (ed.), The Golden Generation: New Light on Post-War British Theatre (London, 2008), 162. Coleman was very interested in the new medium and later took a course at the BBC in the mid-1950s, before working at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Basil Coleman, interview by William Kerley, May–June 2004, Coleman Archive, Box 23, BPF. 83 Tyrone Guthrie, In Various Directions: A View of the Theatre (New York, 1955), 120. 84 Quoted in Jacobs, The Intimate Screen, 132. 85 Coleman and Piper, ‘Billy Budd on the Stage’, 21. 86 Four-Act Production Score, Billy Budd (1951), Box 4, Coleman Archive, BPF, 32. 87 On Britten’s early experiences of going to the cinema, see John Evans, Journeying Boy: The Diaries of the Young Benjamin Britten, 1928–1938 (London, 2009). On cinematic techniques in Britten’s music, see Crilly, ‘Britten and the Cinematic Frame’, 56–72; Philip Reed, ‘Britten in the Cinema: Coal Face’, in Cooke (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, 54–78; Élizabeth de Cacqueray, ‘Music, Poetry, Realism: Benjamin Britten and his Film Scores’, Anglophonia, 11 (2002), 227–36; Donald Mitchell, Britten and Auden in the Thirties: The Year 1936 (London, 1981), 57–93. 88 For Britten’s comments on television, see Britten to Coleman, 12 Sept. 1966, BPF; Britten to Culshaw, 20 July 1967, BPF; ‘Mapreading: Benjamin Britten in Conversation with Donald Mitchell’, in Palmer (ed.), Britten Companion, 87–96. 89 For more on Britten’s operas on television, see Barnes, Television Opera, 42–80; Shannon McKellar, ‘Music, Image and Ideology in Britten’s “Owen Wingrave”: Conflict in a Fissured Text’, Music & Letters, 80 (1999), 390–410; Jeremy Tambling, Opera, Ideology and Film (New York, 1987), 113–25; Danielle Ward-Griffin, ‘Animating Owen Wingrave’, in Philip Rupprecht (ed.), Rethinking Britten (New York, 2013), 237–61. 90 In 1952, the opera was put on stage by Indiana University, but there was only one performance. See Mervyn Cooke, Appendix 1, in Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd, 150. 91 Ten million is the number given by Theodor Uppman, who played Billy Budd. See Post-Screening Conversation between Theodor Uppman and Kirk Browning, 19 Oct. 2002, Audio Recording, Paley Media Center, New York City. 92 For instance, the NBC production of Billy Budd is not included in Paul Kildea’s account of the opera in Benjamin Britten. In Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd, it is accorded a single page and a half in Reed’s very brief article on television opera, which is separate from the stage history by Cooke. Philip Reed, ‘Billy Budd on Television’, in Cooke and Reed (eds.), Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd, 152–3. 93 Britten, quoted in John Culshaw, ‘The Making of Owen Wingrave’, The Times Saturday Review, 8 May 1971, p. 17. His assessment was based on his knowledge that a large chunk of the score had been left out. See Post-Screening Conversation between Uppman and Browning. 94 Merkling, ‘Opera Becomes Theater via NBC-TV’, Musical America, 77 (1957), 16, 17, 67, and 175. 95 On the changing landscape of the American stage, see Kirk, American Opera, 233–49; John Dizikes, Opera in America (New Haven, 1993), 485–91 and 510–17. 96 I have written more extensively about the NBC Opera Theatre’s goals in ‘As Seen on TV: Putting the NBC Opera Theatre on Stage’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 71 (2018), 595–654, and ‘Up Close and Personal: Opera and Television Broadcasting in the 1950s’, Journal of the Society for American Music, 13 (2019), 216–31. Also see Brian Rose, Television and the Performing Arts: A Handbook and Reference Guide to American Cultural Programming (New York, 1986), 135–57. 97 Four-Act Production Score, Billy Budd (1951), Box 4, Coleman Archive, BPF, 39. 98 Samuel Chotzninoff, ‘NBC Music Chief Sees New Approach’, Musical America (1953), 23, 138, and 140 at 138. 99 Typescript, NBC History File 1228, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (henceforth LOC). 100 Early in his life, Samuel Chotzinoff served as a piano accompanist for Efrem Zimbalist and Jasha Heifetz. He then worked as a music critic for the New York Post before taking on the post of music director for NBC. Among his major coups were his engagement of Toscanini to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra and his commission of Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian-Carlo Menotti. 101 Ernest Newman, review, Sunday Times, 9 Dec. 1951. 102 Typescript, NBC History File 1228, LOC. 103 James Hinton, ‘“Billy Budd” on Television in the USA’, Musical Times, 93, no. 1318 (Dec. 1952), 564. 104 Cooke, ‘Britten’s “Prophetic Song”’, 87; Rupprecht, Britten’s Musical Language, 75; Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 164. 105 Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 184. 106 See e.g. Miles Kastendieck, ‘TV Bolsters Poor Britten’, Journal American, 1952; Olin Downes, ‘Billy Budd Scores in Television Bow’, New York Times, 20 Oct. 1952. For a summary of responses, see Hinton, ‘“Billy Budd” on Television in the USA’. 107 Downes, ‘Billy Budd Scores in Television Bow’. 108 Tom Knode, Telegram to Eastern, Central and Western Networks, 20 Oct. 1952, NBC History File 1232, LOC. 109 Sutcliffe, Believing in Opera, 25–35. 110 I have written more extensively about this idea in ‘As Seen on TV’. 111 Samuel Chotzinoff to Olin Downes, 23 Oct. 1952, NBC Box 372, Folder 9 (Music, 1952–3), Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Madison, Wisconsin. 112 Ibid. 113 Auslander, Liveness, 16. 114 Innes, Modern British Drama, 5. 115 Robert Hewison, Culture and Consensus: England, Art and Politics since 1940 (London, 1995), 90–1. 116 Ibid. 117 Quoted in Dunleavy, Television Drama, 72–3. 118 Andrew Crisell, An Introductory History of British Broadcasting (London, 1997), 121. 119 Dunleavy, Television Drama, 72–3. 120 On the origins and problems with this term, see Caughie, Television Drama, 95–101. 121 John Reith, quoted in Jacobs, The Intimate Screen, 1. 122 Troy Kennedy Martin, ‘Nats Go Home: First Statement of a New Drama for Television’, Encore, 11 (1964), 21–33 at 25. 123 Ibid. 124 Benjamin Britten to John Piper, 25 Jan. 1964, reprinted in Philip Reed and Mervyn Cooke (eds.), Letters from a Life: Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten, v: 1958–65 (Woodbridge, 2010), 549. This same letter mentioned Britten’s attendance at a performance of Brecht’s Edward II and it is tempting to think that his concern with the set design may have been inspired by this production, but, as it happens, he and Pears walked out of what Britten called an ‘appallingly hideous & badly acted production’. 125 Britten may have been inspired to revise Billy Budd into two acts after seeing a bifurcated performance of the four-act version in Wiesbaden in March 1952. See Reed, ‘The 1960s Revisions: A Two-Act Billy Budd’, in Benjamin Britten: Billy Budd, 74–84 at 74. 126 Ibid. 79. Reed suggests that the delay in meeting Vere is unfortunate, as Billy professes his loyalty to Vere before having any contact with him. 127 Philip Hope-Wallace, ‘Billy Budd at Covent Garden’, The Guardian, 10 Jan. 1964; ‘A Triumph of Intensity and Imagination’, The Times, 10 Jan. 1964, p. 13; David Cairns, ‘Billy Budd’, Financial Times, 10 Jan. 1964. 128 Hope-Wallace, ‘Billy Budd’. 129 Snowman, The Gilded Stage, 359–60. 130 Cairns, ‘Billy Budd’; Hope-Wallace, ‘Billy Budd’. 131 See e.g. Martin Cooper, ‘Skillful Sea Evocation of “Billy Budd”’, Daily Telegraph, 10 Jan. 1964; Desmond Shawe-Taylor, ‘Billy Budd Returns’, Sunday Times, 12 Jan. 1964. 132 As Coleman recounted, ‘I was so lucky to come back with a certain television technique—and I’d already done operas in this country—and happily I was able to put the two together. By then Ben had devised his second version of Billy Budd, that is it was two acts and not four—with a slight change to the end—this was almost a new production at the opera house.’ Coleman interview by William Kerley. 133 Coleman interview by William Kerley. 134 Two-Act Production Score, Billy Budd (1964), Box 4, Coleman Archive, BPF, 35. 135 Ibid. 298–300. 136 Four-Act Production Score, 314. 137 Tony Abbott, quoted in ‘Billy Budd’, Ariel, 11 (1966), Box 44, Coleman Archive, BPF. 138 Ibid. Coleman received copious notes that were meant to offer ‘guidance for reference at various stages of the action of the piece’. ‘Robinson’s Nautical Notes, 1966’, Box 27, Coleman Archive, BPF. 139 ‘Billy Budd’, Ariel. 140 Caughie, Television Drama, 77. 141 Memo from R. W. Bayliff to Basil Coleman, ‘Re: Proposed Use of a Maximum Number of Cameras’, BBC File T13/280/1: Billy Budd (TX 11.12.66 and repeats), BBC Written Archives, Reading, UK. 142 Coleman, ‘Billy Budd’, Radio Times, 8 Dec. 1966. 143 Quoted in ‘Billy Budd’, Ariel. 144 Christopher Morris, Reading Opera between the Lines: Orchestral Interludes and Cultural Meaning from Wagner to Berg (Cambridge, 2007), 1. 145 Emanuele Senici, ‘Opera on Italian Television: The First Thirty Years, 1954–1984’, in Héctor J. Pérez (ed.), Opera and Video: Technology and Spectatorship (Bern, 2010), 45–70 at 52. 146 Ibid. 147 See e.g. Citron, Opera on Screen, 42; Richard Burke, ‘A History of Televised Opera in the United States’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1963), 147. 148 Martin, ‘Nats Go Home’, 28. 149 Ibid. 150 Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 6. 151 In a letter to Britten on 13 Sept. 1966, Coleman suggested that the composer may not have been that pleased with this approach: the ‘treatment of the interludes is a compromise I know; it is wonderful of you to have accepted it as generously as you did – or did you keep your true feelings from me?’ Quoted in Philip Reed and Mervyn Cooke (eds.), Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten, vi: 1966–1976 (Woodbridge, 2012), 57. 152 The productions of Peter Grimes and Owen Wingrave differ markedly from Billy Budd in that they were filmed in a single studio. This technique, used to appease Britten, was opposed by Basil Coleman and he was dropped from subsequent television productions. See Barnes, Television Opera, 56–9; Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 501 and 508. For more details on the production of Owen Wingrave, see Ward-Griffin, ‘Animating Owen Wingrave’; Barnes, Television Opera, 59–80; and Frances Spalding, ‘Dramatic Invention in Myfanway Piper’s Libretto for Owen Wingrave’, in Walker (ed.), Benjamin Britten: New Perspectives, 86–96. Less has been written about the 1969 BBC production of Peter Grimes, but brief accounts can be found in Barnes, Television Opera, 57–8; Reed and Cooke, Letters from a Life, vi. 257–8. 153 Patricia Macnaughton to Basil Coleman, 12 Dec. 1966, Box 36, Correspondence, Coleman Archive, BPF. 154 Gerald Savory to Basil Coleman, 12 Dec. 1966, ibid. 155 Denis Forman to Basil Coleman, 14 Dec. 1966, ibid. John Culshaw, the Decca executive and future BBC Head of Music Television executive, agreed with this assessment, writing to Coleman: ‘I am writing to you out of the blue to say how much I admired your production of Billy Budd the other night. I believe it was a breakthrough for opera on television and it might even be possible to make a case in favour of Billy Budd in the television medium rather than on stage.’ Culshaw to Coleman, 13 Dec. 1966, BBC File T13/280/1: Billy Budd, BBC Written Archives, Reading, UK. 156 Stephen Walsh, ‘Budd on the Small Screen’, Music and Musicians, 15 (1967), 42–3. 157 Anthony Payne, Tempo, 80 (1967), 19–21. However, Payne was not a fan of the camera’s treatment of the interludes, deriding it as ‘gimmicky’. 158 Indeed, scholars have noted that the music bears markers of chamber opera. Not only was it written as a follow-up to Lucretia and Herring, but its motivic intricacy and restricted (all-male) vocal range have led scholars to make parallels with later chamber operas such as The Turn of the Screw. See Cooke, ‘Britten’s “Prophetic Song”’, 86–7, and Evans, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 164. 159 On Burning Fiery Furnace, see e.g. ‘Britten Parable Opera Suits the TV Screen’, Daily Telegraph, 25 Nov. 1968; Henry Raynor, ‘Church Opera’, The Times, 23 Nov. 1968. For Owen Wingrave, see e.g. international reviews, such as Brian Devenney, ‘Opera was an Artistic Triumph’, Irish Independent, 2 June 1971; Boris Nelson, ‘New Opera “Owen Wingrave” is a Hit’, The Blade, 18 May 1971; Alan Blyth, ‘TV Premiere for New Britten Opera’, New York Herald Tribune, 18 May 1971. On Peter Grimes, see Keith Spence, ‘The Art of Telemusic’, Country Life, 6 Nov. 1969. Others complained about the loss of wide vistas and the cramped set. See e.g. Irving Kolodin, ‘A TV “Peter Grimes” about but without the Sea’, SR, 20 June 1970, and Edward Greenfield, ‘Hemmed in by a Grim Grimes’, Guardian, 3 Nov. 1969. 160 Payne, ‘Billy Budd on TV’, 19; Walsh, ‘Budd on the Small Screen’, 42. 161 Although there was a period of seven years without a new production (1978–85), it has since become a mainstay on the opera stage. Cooke, ‘Stage History and Critical Reception’, 145–6. 162 Ibid. Productions adhering to this tradition include those at the Welsh National Opera (on tour, 1972), the War Memorial Opera House (San Francisco, 1978), the Metropolitan Opera (New York, 1978), and the National Theatre Opera (Mannheim, 1989). To this list could be added the 2010 Glyndebourne Opera production by Michael Grandage. Even non-operatic adaptations of Melville’s Billy Budd have borrowed elements of this template: for instance, in 1999, French filmmaker Claire Denis produced a film adaptation of Melville’s tale called Beau Travail. It used Britten’s music for the soundtrack, narrated the story from the perspective of one of the characters, and featured highly detailed flashbacks to show the parallels between past and present. 163 Cooke, ‘Stage History and Critical Reception’, 143. 164 The angles of the 1978 Dexter stage production recall the different perspectives offered by the cameras in the 1966 BBC production. This multilevelled approach to the ship can also be seen in more recent productions, such as Grandage’s 2010 Glyndebourne production and Deborah Warner’s recent production (2017–19). 165 This production was co-produced by Teatro Real, Madrid, Rome Opera, and the Royal Opera House. For praise of the production, see Fernando Remiro, ‘Deborah Warner’s Billy Budd Sets a New Standard in Madrid’, bachtrack, 6 Feb. 2017; Rupert Christiansen, ‘Billy Budd, Royal Opera House, Review: The Only Great Production of Britten’s Opera that I’ve Seen’, Telegraph, 24 Apr. 2019. For criticism of the mix of ‘realistic’ effects, see Andrew Clements, ‘Billy Budd Review: Magnificently Sung Production is Slow to Focus’, The Guardian, 24 Apr. 2019; Richard Morrison, ‘Billy Budd at the Royal Opera House, The Times, 24 Apr. 2019. Like the 1951 production, some reviews also noted how the vast stage of Covent Garden struggled to convey the intimacies of the work. See e.g. Richard Fairman, ‘A Shipshape Production of Billy Budd at the Royal Opera House’, Financial Times, 25 Apr. 2019. 166 Andrew Clements, review, The Guardian, 19 June 2012. The reference is to Patrick O’Brian, who was known for his detailed nautical novels. 167 Tommasini, ‘Rectitude and Desire’. 168 For the clearest explanation of this line of thinking, see Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 304–7. 169 Kirk, American Opera, 249. 170 Abbate and Parker, A History of Opera, 526–31. 171 Mitchell, Reed, and Cooke (eds.), Letters from a Life, iii. 682–701. 172 Abbate and Parker suggest that this scene is characteristic of Britten’s ‘love of letting the orchestra take the burden of communication at critical moments’. Abbate and Parker, A History of Opera, 530. 173 This can be seen in the NBC Opera Theatre’s approach to opera, as well as that of the BBC under Sydney Newman. For more on realism and opera, see Barnes, Television Opera, 8–10. 174 On new productions of Britten’s works, see Kildea, Benjamin Britten, 307–8. In his article on productions of Verdi’s operas, Mike Ashman approves of updated productions by arguing that ‘“now” is disturbingly powerful, “then” is recuperatively weak’, and points to Verdi’s own wishes to produce contemporary stagings of La Traviata and Un Ballo in Maschera. Ashman, ‘Misinterpreting Verdian Dramaturgy’, in Alison Latham and Roger Parker (eds.), Verdi in Performance (New York and Oxford, 2001), 42–6 at 45. Levin’s account of ‘strong’ readings also supports a production that is ‘surprising’ and somehow against the grain of previous productions. Levin, Unsettling Opera, 45–9. 175 Caughie, Television Drama, 2. © The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Realism Redux: Staging ‘Billy Budd’ in the Age of Television
JO - Music and Letters
DO - 10.1093/ml/gcz064
DA - 2019-08-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/realism-redux-staging-billy-budd-in-the-age-of-television-c6NYueFXg0
SP - 447
VL - 100
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -