Britten's "Haunting Melodies": The Music of Billy Budd as the Universal Language of Human Emotion

Abstracts MLA 2011 | Los Angeles, California “Billy in the Darbies . . . and on Page, Stage, and Screen: Adaptations of Melville’s Billy Budd” Co-Chair: Joseph Fruscione Georgetown University, George Washington University O rganized and moderated by Joseph Fruscione (Melville Society) and Jeff Dailey (Lyrica Society), this collaborative panel brought together five scholar/teachers to discuss adaptations of Billy Budd through short, focused papers that sparked a lively discussion. This was the Melville Society’s first collaborative panel, one we hope will set the tone for future work with other author societies and organizations. In recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s opera, this roundtable examined musical, cinematic, and aural adaptations of Billy Budd. Two panelists discussed the Britten opera, two the Claire Denis film Beau Travail, and one a radio version presented by Focus on the Family. The panelists moved beyond “fidelity criticism” to examine creative responses to Melville’s novella. Britten’s “Haunting Melodies”: The Music of Billy Budd as the Universal Language of Human Emotion Marcia Green San Francisco State University B enjamin Britten’s musical-literary theme—the indictment of human folly as revealed in the tragedy and wastage of war and in the corruption of human innocence—is achieved through his extraordinarily wide orchestral harmonic range. Utilizing a structure that is taut and tense and themes that are often similar in melodic outline, Britten stresses the obsessive nature of the piece. His opera is rich in variety and polytonality. He uses musical keys as literary leitmotifs, such as B-flat major in the Prologue and c  2011 The Melville Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 120 L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S A B S T R A C T S Claggart, to convey their conflict. Britten evokes an emotional dimension that could not be constructed by words alone and produces an unnerving musical tension. “A blur’s in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am”: Revisioning Melville’s Billy Budd from Text to Opera (to Film) Geoffrey Green San Francisco State University O pera and fiction each achieve distinctive artistic statements within their individual palettes of expressivity and inherent qualities of representation . Melville’s symbolic, heavily allusive narrative and its sequential unfolding may be compared with the highly psychoanalytic flashback that constitutes the frame tale of Britten’s opera. Melville’s text challenges us to interpret its enigmatic events from some meaningful and ethical perspective. Britten’s reframing of the narrative as the recollections of an elderly Captain Vere displays the profound word-music interactions best achieved by opera, and his Epilogue may compete with the “Billy in the Darbies” conclusion to the text. Britten’s use of tonality and dissonance enriches our appreciation of the ambiguities at the heart of Melville’s narrative. Weaponizing Billy Budd Tony McGowan West Point I examine the adaptation of Billy Budd that may have reached more ears than any other. In 2002, Focus on the Family produced Billy Budd, Sailor: A Classic Tale of Innocence Betrayed on the High Seas. Broadcast worldwide on evangelical radio, this audio drama potentially reached more than 200 million people. Representing duty, ignorance, and violence sanctified by God, the handsome sailor directs the Indomitable’s (née Bellipotent’s) guns against the French, personifying military preemption. Where such critics as Barbara Johnson find a “cruxi-fiction”—Billy’s innocence crosses to guilt by way of his fist, while Claggart’s guilt passes to innocence by way of his murder—this radio adaptation presents instead a simple “collision between moral opposites,” concomitant with the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq. The ambiguities of “Melville’s fist” are converted to the aggressivity of Constantine’s sword, and certain key ambiguities (namely the Vere-Billy conversation on the eve of Billy’s execution) are scripted and included in this radio adaptation. Audio evidence from the A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 121 E X T R A...