Sep 10, 2004  |  By: BRIAN MOYLAN  | COMMENTS     

THE MODERN CLASSIC “Billy Budd,” which debuts at the Kennedy Center on Saturday, Sept. 18, boasts a gay composer, librettist, director and same-gender undertones throughout the opera. Its composer, Benjamin Britten, wrote it for his life partner.

“Clearly homosexuality is a part of the work and to deny that is foolish. It’s an energy that fuels it,” says Francesca Zambello, the award-winning lesbian opera and theater director who first brought her vision of “Billy Budd” to the stage in 1994 at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland.

In 1995, the same production at London’s prestigious Covent Garden, where “Billy Budd” premiered in 1951, won an Olivier Award (Britain’s equivalent to a Tony) for Best Opera Production. It is one of three Olivier Awards that Zambello has won.

The New York-based director’s interpretation of “Billy Budd” has been presented in France, Italy and various cities across the United States in the past 10 years, and premieres at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., next Saturday. Zambello describes it as “a great story with many layers” and Britten’s crowning achievement of the 20th century, with “wonderful melodies and big choruses.”

The production held appeal for Plácido Domingo, the general director of the Washington National Opera.

“[Domingo] thought he had the right cast for the three important male leads,” Suzanne Stephens, a spokesperson for the Washington National Opera, says about Robin Leggate, Dwayne Croft and Samuel Ramey.

Although Zambello won’t be in D.C. during the opera’s run here to Oct. 3, Stephens said she has worked in Washington with the cast and crew in recent weeks to make sure everything is in sync with her original vision for “Billy Budd.”

During the three-hour production, the story is recalled by Captain Vere (Leggate), the former head of the H.M.S. Indomitable, where Billy Budd (Croft) becomes a sailor in 1797. Budd is a very handsome and likeable fellow, who easily becomes popular on the ship, despite having a stammer that keeps him from speaking when he’s upset.

The ship’s dastardly master-at-arms John Claggart (Ramey)is jealous of Budd’s popularity and good looks and vows to destroy him — an act many critics say results from Claggart’s internalized homophobia and an unwanted, but irrepressible, sexual attraction to Budd.

Claggart trumps up a charge of mutiny against Budd, who becomes so upset that he cannot speak, and instead kills Claggart. Though Budd is innocent of mutiny and acted in self-defense, Vere must put him to death to stop a mutiny.

THE SOURCE MATERIAL FOR the opera is taken from “Billy Budd” the novella by gay “Moby-Dick” novelist Herman Melville that was found in manuscript form when he died in 1891.

The role of Captain Vere was expanded for the opera by the piece’s composer, Britten, who wrote the part for his life partner Peter Pears, an acclaimed
tenor singer.

“I think the element of it, as I said to the cast, it’s not a homosexuality that we know today,” she explains. “It is manifested in different ways. I think a lot of it comes through in brutality — a lot of it is about sex as power. I think Claggart uses sex on the younger boys as a tool to subjugate them to him.”

In addition to same-sex undertones, there also are themes related to Christianity and morality in the work.

“It’s a story about good and evil and how good loses and evil triumphs, sadly,” Zambello says. “I think that makes for rich dramatic possibilities.”