Billy Budd
Lyric Opera of Kansas City, 1999
Scott Cantrell - Opera News
For forty years, Lyric Opera of Kansas City was an everything-in-English
company. But for its forty-first season, which opened last fall, new artistic director Ward Holmquist
scheduled two operas in Italian, La Traviata and L’Italiana in Algeri. Titles were displayed on screens of computer-controlled
LEDs far crisper than projected slides. And in March, Holmquist addressed the most inscrutable lacuna
in the Lyric repertory, the absence of any opera by Benjamin Britten, with a gripping Billy Budd.
Stage director Tim Ocel imagined the whole opera through Vere’s memory—hence
the stylized unit set (by Erhard Rom), with its battered, upturned deck, and the distant, silent
confrontations between Vere and Billy during the orchestral entr’actes. Ocel played down Claggart’s
attraction to Billy to focus, instead, on a mysterious magnetism between the young sailor and Vere.
Having the hanged Billy swinging in the background, in front of a huge moon, made Vere’s final soliloquy
almost unbearably poignant.
A few precarious high notes were small price to pay for Peter Kazaras’ noble,
thoughtful—at times frustrated and tormented—Vere. Never simply aping Peter Pears, Kazaras still
suggested the eloquence of the role’s defining interpreter. No mere villain, Jonathan Prescott’s
Claggart was as tragic as he was evil. Claggart’s darkness, deepened by Prescott’s inky, oily
bass-baritone, suffered in the glow of Billy’s light. Billy calls for somewhat more charisma than John
Packard could muster, but he certainly looked the part and sang it with a virile baritone. Brian Steele
(Redburn), David Soxman (Flint) and RonWitzke (Ratcliffe) differentiated their roles vividly. John
Stephens and Michael Lanman were wonderfully humane as Dansker and Donald, and Nathan Granner made a
touchingly vulnerable Novice. There were fine contributions from Bruce Barr (Red Whiskers), Mark Huseth
(Novice’s Friend) and Chad McAlester (Squeak), as well. The chorus, prepared by Elvera Voth, wasn’t
ideally crisp in some of the trickiest writing, but it gave delight in the sea shanty and thrilled in
the would-be battle scene. Nor was the orchestra (members of the Kansas City Symphony) always so
taut—or so flawlessly tuned—as one could have wished. But Holmquist, who conducted, has brought a
hitherto unimaginable discipline to the Lyric pit, and he was in command of every moment.
Billy Budd
Britten
Lyric Opera of Kansas City
1999
Photo: Erhard Rom