Britten: Billy Budd ~ Hampson
Benjamin Britten's "Billy Budd," based on Melville's story, is the second-best opera about life on the sea since Wagner's "Flying Dutchman"--the best being Britten's "Peter Grimes." It is one of the 20th Century's most tragic operas and the only important opera with an all-male cast. Its music evokes the ocean: the winds and waves, the sailors' songs, and the harsh realities of a seaman's life on a British 18th-century man-of-war. It climaxes in a deadly confrontation between pure good, embodied in the young sailor Billy Budd (Hampson), and pure evil in the sadistic master at arms, John Claggart (Halfvarson). Composed in 1951, it was shortened to the now standard two acts by Britten for a broadcast in 1960. This brilliant first recording of the original four-act version shows that much was lost in the revision.--Joe McLellan