Britten Owen Wingrave Aldeburgh Music Festival

An ideal choice for this year's Aldeburgh Music Festival, Britten's Owen Wingrave. From a very early age, Britten was incensed by bullying and repression.  Indeed, the protection of innocence and the condemnation of cruelty runs through nearly all Britten's work, powerfully informing his whole creative persona.  Owen Wingrave is critical to any real appreciation of what Britten stood for. The Aldeburgh Music Festival and the Britten-Pears Foundation are wise to stage Owen Wingrave again, in the same place where the composer conducted the first public performance back in 1970. In 1914, men marched to war because they were led to believe that they were fighting "the war to end all wars".  One hundred years later, those who believe in military solutions seem to have learned nothing from a century of almost incessant warfare. More than ever, we need Owen Wingrave and Britten's passionate opposition to mindless conformity.

Owen Wingrave was commissioned for television. Nearly a quarter of a million people watched it when it was first broadcast by the BBC in 1972, reaching audiences far beyond any opera house. That in itself is a statement about its significance. Composers wrote for film almost as soon as technology  added sound to movies. Britten enjoyed going to the cinema, and spent his war years working for the GPO Film Unit. In Owen Wingrave, music and an understanding of film technique go together. The abstraction of music can be expressed through devices like split frames and juxtaposed images. On the physical stage, such things aren't easy to carry off.  At Aldeburgh, director Neil Bartlett has chosen a minimalist set, enhanced by dramatic light effects (Ian Scott). This reflects the austerity in the music, which in turn reflects the stark moral situation Owen is faced with. "Listen to the house!" the female singers repeat, their lines intertwining, as if a knot - or noose - were being drawn tight. For the house does speak - "creaks and rustles, groans and moans" .The oppressiveness is almost palpable.  "The "boom of the cannonade", created by percussion and low brass is so sinister that we could be hearing a thousand years of ghosts marching relentlessly towards death. The spirit of Paramore looms so large in the music that we don't  need to see the house to feel its malign presence. Better the dark shadows and spartan set, so our imaginations can conjure up unseen images of horror.

In the original film, portraits of Wingraves past line the walls, menacingly, and come alive, leaping at Owen, just as the present members of his family scold him, singly and in unison. On film, that's plausible, on stage it would be contrived.  Bartlett, and choreographer and movement director Struan Leslie, use a group of young soldiers as a silent chorus. They operate in tight formation, as befits soldiers, but their movements also reflect figures in the music: a very subtle effect, which  justifies their value in the production. They're also useful for technical reasons - they move such furniture as there is on the bare stage, "building" the haunted room by reversing the panels that serve as walls. Most perceptive of all, the soldiers are young, inspiring more sympathy than if they mere replicas of wizened old Wingraves,  ghosts perhaps of young men sent to early deaths. Victims and perpetrators, harnessed together in perpetuity, like the ghosts in the haunted room, like Owen and Paramore.

The stark staging has a further advantage in that it throws extra focus on the singers and on the Britten-Pears Orchestra, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, designated Music Director at the ENO when Edward Gardner moves on. Britten, Nagano and Richard Hickox hover over Wigglesworth, but he gives a good account of the music, stressing the clarity of the writing for solo instruments versus larger groups. Excellent experience for the young players in this orchestra, many of whom will go on to play in larger ensembles.

Ross Ramgobin sings Owen. Again, one retains memories of Gerald Finley and above all, Jacques Imbrailo, who created the part ten years ago when he was still a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists programme at the Royal Opera House. Imbrailo is perhaps the ideal Owen, since his voice shimmers with preternatural purity, but Ramgobin does well against such competition, which says a lot in his favour. Ramgobin's voice is agile and light, with a much more convincingly youthful timbre than Benjamin Luxon and Peter Coleman-Wright.

Susan Bullock sings Miss Jane Wingrave. The part contains sharp edges, to emphasize the character's sterile frustration. Bullock creates the effect of strangled tension without tightening throat or chest, but articulates her words with rapier-sharp diction. Catherine Backhouse sings a pert Kate, and Janis Kelly sings her mother Mrs Julian. Isaiah Bell sang Lechmere unusually well, his voice adding colours to the part, which could otherwise be interpreted as bland and callow. A singer to watch. Jonathan Summers sings Spencer Coyle and Samantha Crawford sings his wife, artfully suggesting the dynamic between the couple, where he controls and she is left to flutter prettily, but bleakly along. Richard Berkeley-Steele sang General Sir Philip Wingrave and James Way sang the Ballad singer, again with more personality (a good thing) than the part might otherwise attract.

This review appears in Opera Today. Please see my other posts on Britten, Owen Wingrave and Aldeburgh by using the labels below.

Blair, Britten and Owen Wingrave

In the Red House, Aldeburgh, where Benjamin Britten lived while Owen Wingrave was being written. Read my review of Britten Owen Wingrave at the Aldeburgh Music Festival here This is part of the library which Britten and Peter Pears used. The décor is totally of its time, preserved much as it was when they chose it. Who sat in the red chair?  Who sat in the white?

Off to Aldeburgh now, for Owen Wingrave at Snape. It's the fourth production I've seen. What period is Owen Wingrave really set in? Can a militaristic family who worship sacrifice really survive from Agincourt to Kandahar? Statistically they'd have been wiped out long ago. Soldiers who die young reproduce less frequently than most men. Rather, I think Paramore is a state of mind. The house is a metaphor for closed minds and conformity. Henry James, a psychologist, might have intuited it as a kind of mental prison, with the haunted room at its core. Maybe that's why the family is so afraid of the legend. It's significant that the women in Owen Wingrave are just as psychotic as the men, perhaps even more so. Mental rigidity is the antithesis of the creative spirit. Perhaps the men in this family run away to war to escape something even more horrible than physical death?
 
When Owen confronts it, he's confronting the source of the psychosis in his family. That's why they are so terrified of the room. They'd rather get torn apart by sabres on the barttlefield than confront the darkness in their psyches. Owen is not a hero in the usual sense of the word.  His whole persona seems to go against flag waving and bombast. For me a key to his character is that he is one of Britten's innocents. Purity of spirit is the most elusive form of bravery, ever. Although Owen Wingrave connects to The Turn of the Screw, in many ways another connection is with Billy Budd, who doesn't conform to any simplistic idea of "hero". Captain Vere spends the rest of   his life trying to figure out why Billy went willingly to death. When Owen is kicked out of Paramore by his grandfather, he finds peace. Perhaps he could have walked away and started a new life from scratch. But Kate, his childhood buddy, confronts him. She might be little more than a child but already she's been poisoned by the family mass hysteria. So he goes into the room. What happens next, I've often wondered ? Is Kate saved ? Does the family collapse?

Britten adds an extra layer of pacifism to Henry James's original, expanding the psychological with the political. It's absolutely valid that this aspect of the opera should be developed in this year when we remember 1914-1918. Pacifism isn't easy.   Defying the forces that push nations to war requires great strength and committment. It is by no means the easy option. Today, when Tony Blair refuses to connect his WMD lies with the present destabilzation,  we need more than ever to recognize responsibility for our actions.  In 1914 men marched to serve "the war to end all wars". But war did not stop war.

Please see my other pieces on Owen Wingrave, Britten and Aldeburgh by clicking on the labels below. Review to follow.

Britten Owen Wingrave - made for TV

This year's Aldeburgh Music Festival begins with Benjamin Britten's Owen Wingrave, which Britten himself conducted in the same theatre in November 1970. For my review of the Aldeburgh production see HERE.  While the opera was in gestation, the revolutions of 1968 were raging. Paris was brought to a standstill by Danny The Red and student protestors. Russian tanks rolled in to crush the Prague Spring. Buddhist monks burned themselves alive on the streets of Saigon. The US military was bogged down in the unwinnable quagmire of the Vietnam War. Britten saw these images only in print. He didn't, as yet, own a TV set. Yet Owen Wingrave was planned for television and broadcast to the nation by the BBC. It says much about modern Britian that such investment in artistic vision would be permitted today.

The original BBC film of Owen Wingrave is worth watching for obvious historical reasons: the audio-only recording is a benchmark  The cast included most of the Britten specialists of the time, such as Benjamin Luxon, John Shirley-Quirk, Heather Harper, Janet Baker, and  Jennifer Vyvyan. Peter Pears sang Sir Philip Wingrave. Poor Pears, he's a brilliant singer, but he can't act, even when he's playing a stiff old man.

Concentrating on the audio alone, and using your imagination for the visuals is a good idea, because you can engage with what the music depicts. "Listen to the house!" the female singers repeat, their lines intertwining, as if a knot - or noose - were being drawn tight. For the house does speak - "creaks and rustles, groans and moans" (to quote Mrs Coyle). The oppressiveness is almost palpable.  "The "boom of the cannonade", created by percussion and low brass is so sinister that we could be hearing a thousand years of ghosts marching relentlessly towards death; Paramore is thoroughly haunted. Who is the ghost of the boy in the locked room? Is he the bully or the murdered boy, or is he the malevolent force that's been driving Wingraves for centuries?

At first, the original BBC film seems realistic in a conventional sense, traditional enough to please the most narrow-minded conservative. Late Victorian or Edwardian costumes, a period décor. Spencer Coyle's home is a horror of overstuffed furniture, all flat surfaces cluttered with knicknacks. Fans of Antiques Roadshow will swoon. But the opera starts in Paramore, where the portraits of Wingraves past glare down from the walls. But look carefully: the portraits are most definitely not "period" but hideous pastiche. Paint in thrown on in globs, faces distorted as if the Old Masters who painted them were prototype Francis Bacons.  Don't assume the paintwork is disintegrating : perhaps these portraits tell us more about their subjects than we dare know. "Listen to the House!"

As the music leads Owen towards Paramore, we see a series of drawings of the house, from different angles- hideously drawn like bad images off cheap paintings : weeds grow in cracks, the house is in decay. The interior with its wide staircase belongs in a horror movie. When the music depicts fanfares, we see real flags, but made of roughly painted rags. Those who demand "historical realism" in opera stagings absolutely do not get the point. It's also relevant that Britten and Pears were fond of relatively modern art.

Although Britten didn't watch TV until fairly late in life, he watched a lot of films, so he knew very well how film might support abstract musical ideas. Indeed, composers wrote for film almost as soon as sound movies wewre made. Britten's war work included Night Mail. When Owen sings his soliloquy "At last, it's out"  he's seen alone in the park, while images of his family are transposed over him, as their voices intrude upon him. Cinematic technique adapted to music, and vice versa. The interplay between film technique and music is even more interesting in the scene "There was a boy" when the legend of the house is told. The narrator is  heard through an echo chamber -boys voices heard from a distance, and the sound of toy horns and bells. The boys are seen in sepia slow motion, as if in early film. An eerie effect, suggesting a time tunnel.

Owen is probably not much more than 18, between school and a military commission, and Kate's not much older. Indeed, a sub-theme of youth versus age runs through the opera, though it's not dominant. Owen and Kate's music, however, is far too sophisticated for teenagers.  Benjamin Luxon was only 34 when the film was made, but looks and sounds somewhat overblown. Those who insist that appearances matter more than singing just don't understand opera, or indeed art. My ideal Owen is Jacques Imbrailo, not because he looks young but because his voices glistens with purity and strength.

Colin Graham directed the staging, while Brian Large directed the film.  Stage directing and film directing are different disciplines with different perspectives. Very few directors can do both equally well. A good film director takes his cue from the stage director, and both take their cue from the music and the meaning. Large was only 32 when he made this film. He was to go on to become a pioneer in the art of filming opera. Although this film is very dated - it reeks of the 70's  - it's worth seeing because it shows how much more finesse there is today.