Reviews

HOUSTON – Even the people we think we know best move to forces we cannot know or understand. And ambiguities of motive and morality fascinated Benjamin Britten, never more so than in his 1951 opera Billy Budd . Alas, it's coarsened in the new Houston Grand Opera production that opened Friday at the Wortham Center.

Herman Melville, on whose seafaring novella the opera is based, imagined the sadistic master-at-arms John Claggart with a certain aristocratic bearing. Billy, handsome, eager and generous, freezes in a stammer at emotional moments. "There is always some flaw in it," the thoughtful Captain Vere observes of goodness and beauty.

Precisely because he's drawn to Billy's handsomeness and goodness – there's more than a hint of homoeroticism – Claggart must destroy him, or be destroyed by him. Falsely accused of mutiny, Billy strikes out at Claggart and inadvertently kills him.

Vere's sweetly soaring music when he sings of Billy suggests something beyond fatherly affection. But to preserve order on the ship, he must abide by military laws demanding Billy's death.

In an epilogue, in an opera rife with Christian themes of betrayal, sacrifice and redemption, the aged Vere remembers Billy's last words ("Starry Vere, God bless you") as an absolution.

For an opera of elegant moral symmetries, it's a pity HGO's Neil Armfield staging so coarsens it. Daniel Belcher, an adorable Papageno in HGO's 2004 Magic Flute, still seems to be playing Mozart's goofy bird catcher, not Britten's eager but grounded hero. His handsome baritone punches out notes more than it sings lines. And what's with that awful wig, blond curls halfway down his back?

Bass Phillip Ens booms sonorously as Claggart but exudes too little physical menace. Andrew Kennedy's Vere croons hauntingly but bleats under pressure. And he lacks dignity for a man who reads Plutarch for pleasure. Portraying him as bedraggled and disoriented in prologue and epilogue spoils the opera's point of clarifying redemption.

The rest of the cast is quite good, Chad Freeburg's powerful Novice a real "find." Prepared by Richard Bado, the chorus is superb at both pianissimo and fortissimo, but physical silliness in the sea chanty "We're off to Samoa" evokes South Pacific more than an 18th-century British man of war.

Brian Thomson's minimalist set is a slender backdrop of gray clouds and a big hydraulic-pistoned platform that revolves, rises, lowers and tilts with increasingly annoying creaks and groans. With nothing to reflect sound, voices carry poorly, obliging conductor Patrick Summers to keep a lid on the orchestra. Musically, the effect on opening night was a bit cautious, although apart from trumpets challenged on high the playing was topnotch.

PLAN YOUR LIFE Repeats at 2 p.m. today and May 4, and at 7:30 p.m. Friday and May 9 at the Wortham Center's Brown Theater, Texas and Smith, Houston. $35 to $250. (Toll-free) 1-800-626-7372, www.houstongrandopera.org.