The rules of war, unlike the articles of faith, permit no leniency, no 50 shades of grey. "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!" laments Starry Vere, captain of HMS Indomitable aboard which Billy Budd is set. Beautiful but impetuous Billy kills the hated master-at-arms and pays the highest price. With clinical urgency, a drumhead trial rules against him but leaves stains of guilt for ever.
Those words of Vere sum up the simple, lynch-law brutality of Britten's 1951 opera, which opened in a stark new production by David Alden at the Coliseum on Monday. The hype warned of controversy. "Aldenism" has almost entered the operatic lexicon as a guarantee of high-quality shock, whether referring to this Alden, who directed ENO's award-winning Peter Grimes or to his twin brother, Christopher Alden, who staged a brilliant but vilified A Midsummer Night's Dream (2011), where verdant forest gave way to concrete school playground.
Instead, even surprisingly, this Budd delivers a deliberate, carefully told narrative, enacted within the rusty, tarred hull of any gunship from any era or regime in the past century. Adam Silverman's lighting delineates each part of the action with chiaroscuro shadow and gleam, highlighting the men's weary faces and giving focus. Discomforting and at times boring to look at, it conveys the tedium, incarceration and petty frustrations of war with unflinching veracity.
In Paul Steinberg's lovingly rendered abstraction of the Indomitable, the enormous cannon doubles as a corridor into Vere's impossibly white cabin. Constance Hoffman's costumes run the full eclectic gamut of dreary modern warfare, from sweatshirt to jackboot. A couple of regency chairs nod back at the 1797 setting of Melville's long-winded though incomplete novel on which EM Forster and Eric Crozier based the libretto.
This is all a far cry from the knot-tying, lanyard-straightening, brass-shining stage business which some Budd productions offer – perhaps as nervous compensation for a large, all-male cast. The bonus here is that with the decks in every sense cleared, the cameo roles take on more recognisable character, audible in Britten's vocal writing but often missed in the flurry of identically dressed men behaving badly.
In this expert ensemble – with tremendous chorus work – we know which one is Maintop (Jonathan Stoughton), which the Bosun (Andrew Rupp). Snivelling Squeak (Daniel Norman) and Nicky Spence's Novice, flogged and battered, made sharp impact. Gwynne Howell was tender and true as the old seaman Dansker. Darren Jeffery, Jonathan Summers and Henry Waddington brought vivid singularity to Messrs Flint, Redburn and Ratcliffe. Kim Begley was a classy Vere, whether as an old man, haunted by memories, coat swirling in Lear-like torment, or as a dapper, white-uniformed captain.
"They took to him like hornets to treacle," wrote Melville of Billy's welkin-eyed charm. Benedict Nelson's fresh-faced energy suits the role, though his voice is as yet too light, at times overwhelmed by the orchestration. He will get there. The most provocative interpretation was that of Claggart, the corrupt master-of-arms, played by Matthew Rose, winner of the 2012 Critics' Circle exceptional young talent award.
Delivering his vocal lines with unsnarling warmth of tone, he added complexity to the role, pacing back and forth in obsessive straight lines and suggesting a terrible, bottled-up hatred. For the first time you could believe that Claggart himself once possessed a similar, Billy-type "handsome sailor" beauty before life, in some unspoken way, betrayed him.
Misapprehension has it that Billy Budd is about the sea, a briny younger sibling to Britten's Peter Grimes. Melville, too, wrote another maritime masterpiece: Moby-Dick. But in Budd the challenge is within, rather than outside, the ship. Vere is no Ahab of rage and bluster but a man at war with his soul. The sea provides a surly backdrop, with none of the elemental ferocity or glitter of nature of Grimes. In the 1999 film Beau travail, a highly choreographed and sensual version of Budd, director Claire Denis demonstrates this by setting it in the semi-desert of Djibouti.
In the authoritative hands of conductor Edward Gardner, Britten's score flares, sparks and fractures with white heat and luminescence. The ENO orchestra is on blazing form. In this oppressive and disconcerting staging, the consistently enthralling action takes place below deck – in the pit. If you find no other rewards – and Rose's Claggart alone is worth the ticket – Britten's music will leave you enriched.
Even geniuses get things wrong. Always offhand on the subject of other composers, Britten considered Brahms a bore, his First Symphony "ugly and pretentious"; his Second, "dull". No doubt someone knows what he thought about the Third. Simon Rattle conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in this work, together with Webern's Six Pieces for Orchestra Op 6 and Schumann's Symphony No 3 "Rhenish", in Birmingham and London last week. The Vienna Phil's pure, golden string quality, finely gradated woodwind and bright-toned brass are incapable of making an ugly sound.
The players struggled, however, with the Barbican acoustic, unfamiliarity surely responsible for the shaggy opening and some untidy entries. The Webern was right up to the mark, particularly in the tenebrous funeral march. By the last work in the concert, Schumann's "Rhenish", they were at ease, the playing taut and lean. This five-movement work, which can seem ponderous, danced and pulsated towards a breathtaking finale which won cheers as the last note sounded. The VPO is back at the Proms in September. I wasn't going to mention women or their absence. If you must know I spotted at least four. They are on the march.
Grange Park Opera in Hampshire, likewise, continues its unstoppable progress. In short: Idomeneo, directed and designed by Charles Edwards and conducted by Nicholas Kraemer, began boldly and attractively with a talented cast including Daniela Lehner, Nigel Robson, Hye-Youn Lee and Amy Freston. It floundered dramatically in Act III, but nothing diminishes the pleasure of hearing Mozart's most inventive operatic score, boisterously played by the English Chamber Orchestra.
Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, directed and designed by Antony McDonald and superbly conducted by Stephen Barlow (why isn't he at Covent Garden or ENO every night?) was gripping both dramatically and musically. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, playing at the Grange for the first time, demonstrated their expertise at Russian music, now a mainstay of their repertoire. Check out their recent recordings.
Anne Sophie Duprels had sweet intensity as Lisa and all the cast deserve praise. But the outstanding discovery was Carl Tanner who, as the card-fixated Hermann, detonated each high note with bright, daring accuracy and delivered this maniacal role with exactly the right reedy, nasal Russian-style tone and lumbering physicality. (How to pay a man a compliment.) By virtue of the ingenious patronage system of Grange Park, you can sponsor a singer or even, up to a point, his body parts – starting at £1,500. Tanner is divided into three sponsorable parts: head, torso and legs. As Salome might have said, bags I the head.
