Billy Budd is an opera by Benjamin Britten, first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 1 December 1951. It is based on the short novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville.
E. M. Forster discussed the novel in his Clark lectures at Cambridge University. He had met Britten before the Second World War and they built up a friendship. In 1948, the question arose of whether Forster would provide a libretto for Britten, and by that Nov...
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Billy Budd is an opera by Benjamin Britten, first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 1 December 1951. It is based on the short novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville.
E. M. Forster discussed the novel in his Clark lectures at Cambridge University. He had met Britten before the Second World War and they built up a friendship. In 1948, the question arose of whether Forster would provide a libretto for Britten, and by that November, Britten seems to have mentioned Billy Budd as a possibility. In fact, Forster agreed to this project, and worked with Eric Crozier to write the opera's libretto.
Originally, the opera was written in four acts, but, in 1960, Britten revised it substantially in preparation for a BBC broadcast revival, compressing it into two acts and cutting Vere's appearance at the end of Act I. This meant that his first appearance after the prologue was not a public speech but a private moment alone in his cabin. The two-act version is generally...
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