In its revival of Francesca Zambello's production of Britten's Billy Budd, the Royal Opera House has assembled a world-class trio of singers in the opera's three main roles. The relationships between Simon Keenlyside's press-ganged sailor Billy Budd, Kim Begley's Captain Vere, and Eric Halfvarson's master-at-arms Claggart, are the emotional and dramatic core of Britten's investigation of innocence, corruption and redemption on board the warship Indomitable in 1797.
Halfvarson has a magnificently malevolent presence from his very first entrance. The laser-sharp focus and intensity of his voice carries Claggart inexorably to the climactic moment of his murder at the hands of the doomed, stammering Billy. Halfvarson's performance makes Claggart's essential evil stem from a virulent self-loathing. His Claggart manipulates the crew with inescapable force.
This interpretation is the antithesis of Keenlyside's Billy Budd. The rounded tone of Keenlyside's voice and his natural athleticism show Billy's extroversion and simple-minded goodness; he is both vulnerable and strong-willed. During the first act, Keenlyside turns Billy into a holy fool - a well-loved member of the crew, incapable of believing that anyone could bear him malice.
Claggart's first act solo demonstrates the depths of his appalling desire for Billy's death. But Halfvarson creates a Claggart who is more than a cipher for evil. The passion of his performance allows a glimpse of Claggart's depraved humanity; he reveals the roots of Claggart's wrong-doing in an acceptance of a chillingly ineluctable fate - his accidental death at the hands of Billy. And Billy becomes self-aware through a similar acknowledgement of his inevitable hanging in his final solo scene.
Caught between Billy and Claggart is Kim Begley's Vere. Begley captures both Vere's reflective intelligence, and his tortured agonising between his feelings for Billy and his duty as a captain. And the whole opera is about a negotiation between private emotions and social responsibility. The success of this production is the way it seamlessly moves from the individual worlds of Billy, Claggart and Vere to the public domain of the crew. Alison Chitty's sets elegantly link Vere's lonely authority with the lusty community of Britten's sailors, among whom Alan Opie's po-faced pedant Mr Redburn and Stephen Richardson's Mr Flint are especially memorable.
But perhaps the most important character in the work is the sea, represented in Britten's rich orchestration. Richard Hickox and the Royal Opera Orchestra play the score with symphonic scale and breadth, embodying the elemental power of the opera's emotional and natural forces, and binding together the human confusions at the heart of the story. Sadly there was also needless, non-human confusion in the form of the Opera House's decision to provide surtitles - an insult to the cast's faultless enunciation of EM Forster's libretto.
Until October 3. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
