The Story of Billy Budd, Sailor - Aix-en-Provence Festival (2025) - The Story of Billy Budd, Sailor - Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (2025)

Description

World Premiere.

Based on Britten's Billy Budd.

"We repeat it from port to port, the story of Billy Budd is an enigma: how could this handsome sailor, beloved by all, end up a criminal, hanging from the yardarm of his ship? Melville's unfinished short story, like a mythical parchment giving rise to many comments, has produced a fascinating fog of meaning. In the plot, the mist of war invading the North Sea obscures to the point of erasing the very ideas of law and society in the West; it also fatally mixes with the nebula of homosexual desire which, by turns, destroys and saves the protagonists - this poor sample of humanity lost on the waves. For Ted Huffman and Oliver Leith, concentrating Britten's opera by reinterpreting its narrative and sound material means shifting the gaze to get to the essential: rediscovering the folkloric root, the sailor's ballad which is never fixed; interrogating this queer fog which floats from Melville and Britten to us, extending into political meditation and metaphysics on what makes humanity, cements or destroys a community."

More information is available on the official website of the festival.