Britten Prince of the Pagodas, Birmingham

At last, a new production of Benjamin Britten's  ballet, The Prince of the Pagodas, which might erase memories of the gauche production John Cranko choreographed in 1957,  which the composer disliked so much he didn't really touch the genre again. As music, The Prince of the Pagodas is a milestone in Britten's oeuvre because he's experimenting with ideas and sound he absorbed in the Far East, which would lift his music onto an altogether more adventurous plane. From The Prince of the Pagodas, we look forward to Curlew River, The Turn of the Screw and to Death in Venice. Dance infuses much of Britten's work. In Death in Venice, Tadzio's dance on the beach invokes the very spirit of life and art, and brings Apollo himself into the world of mortals,

What might Britten have achieved had he created ballet for more sympathetic interpreters? Until now, we've had to rely on Oliver Knussen's 2006 recording to hear an intelligent account of the music.  The Royal Opera House revived the streamlined Kenneth Macmillan choreography  in 2012.  (read here what I wrote then). But it's high time the ballet was completely rethought afresh.

The Birmingham Royal Ballet, in conjunction with the National Ballet of Japan, commissioned a new production, choreographed by David Bintley. Claire Seymour, author of The Operas of Benjamin Britten, went to Birmingham to experience the new approach.

"In a programme article, Bintley explains that he sees Pagodas primarily as a ‘love story with no reason, purpose, conclusion or romance!’; he has aimed to make ‘another kind of love story, not expounding on the Eros type love of a man for a woman, but portraying something more mystical and subtle … the love of a girl for her brother, a father for his son and ultimately that of a family reunited after much trial and tribulation’. 

"......These changes have many merits. Sakura is more strongly characterised and the narrative given more focus and drive, through the introduction of the quest in Act 2. There also opportunities for additional digressions which allow for the introduction of a host of contrasting contexts and characters, and also provide ‘action’ for some of the longer musical episodes.....Perhaps the balance between pathos and humour is not quite right, though, leaning too far in favour of the comic"

Read the full review here in Opera Today. 

Britten's Prince of the Pagodas - essential listening

The Royal Ballet is doing Benjamin Britten's The Prince of the Pagodas at the Royal Opera House. Because it's choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan, it's part of ballet history. But for music lovers, it is absolutely essential. Without The Prince of the Pagodas, we might not have Death in Venice.

The Prince of the Pagodas is so crucial to Britten's music that that it's surprising that there's been so little analysis in the media. What makes this ballet unique is that Britten is consciously cross-cultural, experimenting with new ideas he would develop later. Nowadays gamelan is practically mainstream, and everyone's heard about Bali, so it's hard to miss what makes the music in this ballet unique. In serious music circles, however, the importance of The Prince of the Pagodas has never been in doubt. Read Mervyn Cooke's Britten and The Far East (Boydell, 1998)  It is so well written that it is a first point of reference for anyone interested in Britten, or indeed modern music and cross-cultural studies.

Benjamin Britten was never insular. Mervyn Cooke describes the influence of non-western music on western music (Debussy, Poulenc, McPhee)  and Britten's visit to Bali, where he was assisted by a Dutch musicologist who specialized in Balinese music. Britten was no casual tourist. He'd learned Balinese music from McPhee (see here for a clip of Britten and McPhee in 1941, playing transciptions) and knew the correct terminology and structures. Cooke's analysis of the impact on Britten's music is so penetrating that I won't summarize. Cooke's book is a central key to Britten studies. You NEED it!

The photo above is Taman Ayun Temple, Bali, coutresy Geoff Clarke. Click to enlarge. It's interesting how landscape affects culture. Throughout Asia, rice fields are carved in terraces, curving round the slopes of mountains. Rice is also grown on flat plains, of course, but even there rice padis are enclosed by low walls to regulate the flow of water. There's still a pattern  in the landscape as the padis are small and follow the shape if the terrain. Terraces and padis are ecologically sound because they make maximum use of rainflow and growing space. (This photo is Japan.) Pagodas and temples reflect this too,as they rise upwards in stages. There is cosmological significance, too complex to go into here, but the point is that physical design comes from organic experience and from the landscape. Think of the way the Great Wall follows the contours of the land. .

Translate this into music: rhythmic series! Much non-western music moves in plateaux that vary imperceptibly, acceleration and decelaration, changes in tempo and pitch regulated communally by the performers when they feel right about it. The whole structural ethos is different to western music. Percussion predominates. Perhaps it's also significant that in many non-western cultures, music is associated with dance. Thai and Balinese dancers for example use angular, rthymic movements that might seem at odds with body shape, but are used sensually and expressively.

As Mervyn Cooke notes, it would be unthinkable to separate music and dance in Balinese culture. We can see why Britten was persuaded to write The Prince of the Pagodas though ballet was not a form that interested him greatly in principle. The Royal Ballet staging (Monica Mason, Grant Coyle, Designs Nicholas Georgiadis) reflects Britten's Bali in the sense that we see pagodas very much like the ones at Taman Ayun - particularly evocative towards the end when they're lit from within, so they seem like glass or ice sculptures. Even the tubular metallic uprights (presumably abstract castle towers) feel right in musical terms. Much of the rest of the ballet seemed very western to my non-western eyes, as if a ballet from the time of Louis XIV or the Tsars were transported to a fantasy setting. That's perfectly apt, though, considering John Cranko's plot is a strange mix of fairy tale and absolute monarchy. As dance, I would have liked more adventuresome movements picking up on the exotic quality of the music, but that's unrealistic. It's  Kenneth Macmillan's ballet not mine! A good critic respects that the author of a work has a point even if it's not the same as the critic's.

Western ballet music is episodic because it has to allow set pieces for dancers to show what they can do best. For dance lovers, that's the whole point.  Some composers do episodic brilliantly, but I suspect that for Britten it didn't come so easily. Read Mervyn Cooke again for more detailed analysis of the work. Britten is not writing incidental music around dance, but experimenting with ideas he's adapted from Balinese music.  This is the USP of The Prince of the Pagodas, it's "unique selling point"  What a pity that more wasn't made of it in the media and marketing. In Act Two,  the long uninterrupted flow allows Britten to write as if he were writing a tone poem. Musically, it's the most stunning part of the whole work. This is where Britten is really "telling the story" as dream  sequence, connecting to the bizarre fantasy that makes a princess fall for a Salamander. (The Freudian symbolism is obvious.) Perhaps that's why there were two intervals which killed the dramatic pace. The first and last acts are almost bookends for the heart of the piece. .

Oliver Knussen conducted Britten's The Prince of the Pagodas in 2006. There's a wonderful recording, energetic, bright, idiomatic and also accessing the darker levels of its meaning, and brought out the Balinese inventiveness very sharply. He'd read Mervyn Cooke. Barry Wordsworth conducted this 2012 revival with a pleasant Romantc feel, perhaps more attuned to MacMillan than to Britten, which is perfectly valid.  Recently, Britten's original 1957 recording has been re-released. It should be interesting as composer recordings usually are, but the genesis of the piece wasn't easy, and Knussen has the benefit of fifty years' extra reflection.

Please explore this site for more on Britten, non-western music and cross-cultural influences. Messiaen is relevant tooi. Please also see HERE for a description of the theatre Britten and Pears gave a recital in when they visted Macau in 1956.

Benjamin Britten's Balinese Soul

Benjamin Britten's The Prince of the Pagodas at the Royal Opera House (Royal Ballet) demonstrates how different ballet audiences are from music audiences. All the attention on the dancing, almost nothing analytical  about the music. So no wonder The Prince of the Pagodas has a reputation for being awkward. John Cranko's scenarios aren't much odder than many other ballet or opera plots, and Britten writes sequences  that Kenneth MacMillan could choreograph in  a fairly straightforward way. Therein, I think, lies the problem. What Britten was trying to write in The Prince of the Pagodas is his own version of Balinese music theatre, but what everyone else expected was convention.  Although by its nature ballet is episodic, appreciating this music means understanding how it works as a whole and how it connects to the rest of Britten's music.

Perhaps mainstream audiences weren't ready for this in 1957, but non-western music had been known in the west for decades. In 1870, Japanese and Indonesian music caused a sensation in Paris. Just as Debussy and Picasso were inspired by non-western cultures, so, too, Benjamin Britten. Most famous of those working on non-western music was Colin McPhee, who lived in Bali and studied its culture from the perspective of a musicologist and practising composer. Britten met McPhee when he sojourned in New York. Below is a clip from a recording made in 1941, where Britten and McPhee play a transcription of Balinese music, prepared by McPhee from music he'd collected in Indonesia. Later Britten and Pears toured Indonesia and Japan, just as Messiaen was to do a few years later. From The Prince of the Pagodas, to Curlew River and Death in Venice.  Britten internalizes non-western music into his own work.  Hence the significance of The Prince of Pagodas, and why it needs to be heard as well as seen.