Beau travail & Billy Budd

Beau travail (1999)
FLICK Based on Herman Melville’s novella “Billy Budd” and set within the British Navy of 1797, Beau travail (literally translated as Good Work) is staged within the French Foreign Legion, and shifts locations from the sea to an East African desert. French director Claire Denis is not concerned as much with narrative and dialogue here as she is about presenting images of an all-male society and the responses they invoke. Themes of racism and political hierarchy come into play as the cinematography beautifully captures shirtless buff men while they work, exercise and play on the hot sand. Hallucinatory, and slightly homoerotic, several scenes play out to excerpts from Benjamin Britten’s opera Billy Budd. My Score: 8 out of 10.

Billy Budd
THEATER (The following is excerpted from the writings of Bill Buchanan. Billy Budd will be performed at the Pittsburgh Opera from May 6-12, featuring baritone Nathan Gunn as seaman Billy Budd. See the link below for more info on their production.)

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) was a 20th Century British composer who wrote in many genres but is particularly known for works for voice including opera… Billy Budd marks Britten’s return to the grand opera style of Peter Grimes. He had abandoned “grand opera” because of the expense and politics of staging large-scale works with immense casts, orchestras and choruses.

In 1948, the author E. M. Forster (A Room With a View, Howard’s End, Passage to India, Maurice) was a guest in Britten’s home at which time Britten discussed with Forster the idea of collaborating on the new opera with him and Eric Crozier. The trio worked on the libretto off and on through early 1950 when Britten finally began the compositional sketch. It is interesting to follow the writing of the libretto, especially in light of Britten’s active involvement: it is not uncommon for a composer to have influence over the writing of a libretto, but Britten was directly involved in its writing from the beginning, and he added text during the compositional phase.

The libretto is set mostly in prose rather than verse. Forster was concerned that a prose text would inhibit Britten; however Britten “found his terse, vivid sentences, with their strong rhythms, melodically inspiring.” Billy Budd, an opera in four acts, premiered at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 1 December 1951 (it was broadcast live on BBC radio) and featured Theodore Uppman as Budd and Peter Pears as Captain Vere.

No further productions were mounted until 1961 when Britten revised the opera into two acts in preparation for a BBC radio broadcast and in hope of mounting a new stage production of the opera (which finally happened in 1964 under the baton of Georg Solti). It is this two-act revision that will be presented by Pittsburgh Opera in May 2007 with Nathan Gunn as Budd.

http://www.pittsburghopera.org/0607season/billybudd.shtml?search=billy=A000