Benjamin Britten’s surprising habit of ‘Christianising’ non-Christian stories in his operas

Benjamin Britten was one of those composers whose religious leanings were unclear; and as a gay man in mid-20th Century England, he had few reasons to love a Church that showed little sign of loving him.

But he nonetheless produced quantities of music for church performance, much of it significant. And his stage works had an interesting habit of “Christianising” non-Christian stories – an example being Curlew River which played in this summer’s 75th edition of the Aldeburgh Festival.

Written in 1964, Curlew River was the first of Britten’s so-called Church Parables: short operas written for performance not in theatres but in sacred spaces, and designed for staging in the austere, ritualised manner of a liturgical drama enacted by some monastic community.

With music that grows out of plainsong, they feel ancient, timeless (in a 1960s sort of way). And Curlew River has the added resonance of being based on a Japanese Noh play whose slow-moving intensity had impressed Britten when he first encountered it on a trip to Asia.

The story tells of a woman searching for her lost son and driven mad by despair until, ferried across a river, she finds his tomb and is granted a consoling vision of the boy. Britten translates the action from Japan to Suffolk and from Buddhist myth into a Christian parable of grace – resulting in a work of haunting beauty, the more powerful for the ritualised restraint of the performance style.

Performed in the magnificent medieval church at Blythburgh, on a wooden catwalk running the entire length of the nave from font to chancel, it played out amidst the audience with a confronting closeness.

And though Deborah Warner’s staging tried to secularise things (there wasn’t too much sense of a community of monks making the show), the text was undeniable. As was the agonised intensity of Ian Bostridge as the madwoman (the Curlew cast is all-male), sending shivers down the spine as he collapsed before the spirit of the boy to take a blessing from his own child’s outstretched hand.

With a comparably striking performance from Duncan Rock as the Ferryman, luxury casting of Willard White in the modest role of the Abbott, and deft handling of Britten’s score by a choice instrumental and vocal ensemble under Audrey Hyland, it was surely this year’s Aldeburgh highlight. Which is saying something when you consider that the season included a landmark staging of Judith Weir’s confoundingly enigmatic opera Blond Eckbert, a dazzling account of music from Britten’s rarely danced ballet Prince of the Pagodas by the LPO, a residency by the intriguingly unconventional young violinist Daniel Pioro…and so much else.

In times when serious music is struggling, thanks to the multiple whammies of Brexit, Covid, inflation and political indifference, Aldeburgh stands out like a beacon of resilience. It’s a national treasure. And that its retiring Chief Executive Roger Wright has just been given a knighthood in the King’s birthday honours tells you as much.

That said, East Anglia has another treasure in the Thaxted Festival which happens not so far from Aldeburgh on the Essex borders, in a small town with a great church whose splendour rivals Blythburgh and happens to be where Gustav Holst was resident organist during the 1910s-20s.

As this year is Holst’s 150th anniversary, the festival (which traces its origins back to his initiative) has been celebrating with a vengeance. And among the things I heard there was a packed-out organ recital (yes there are such things) on the historic instrument at which he used to sit.

Dating back to the 1820s, it was played here by Peter Holder – sub-organist at Westminster Abbey and soon to be Director of Music at Christ Church, Oxford – in a programme that featured a new commission from Iain Farrington: a composer best known for arranging other people’s works, but with a virtuosity that demands attention in its own right.

The commission was an organ suite based on Holst’s folk-song settings, re-imagined into something like the jazzily toe-tapping style of Farrington’s addictive Advent carol, Nova, nova, that’s become a staple on the Oxbridge choral circuit in the past few years. Only a hard heart could resist it. Mine surrendered unequivocally.

I was more equivocal about the Magic Flute which also played in Thaxted Church during the festival – done by a touring company, Wild Arts, for which I have a high regard. It wasn’t so inventive as their previous shows have been, and didn’t look so good: Flute is a problem for a small-scale outfit, it’s too complicated to reduce down without turning into slightly desperate cartoon-like mayhem.

But the music was a joy, with an engagingly warm, well-sung Papageno from Gareth Brynmor John and brilliant playing from a tiny but accomplished band under Orlando Jopling.

Holst could only have been pleased to think that, in these times when access to live opera is so limited in Britain, it turns up at Thaxted. Courtesy of his surviving Festival. And making people very happy in the process.

Photo: screenshot from www.brittenpearsarts.org.

The post Benjamin Britten’s surprising habit of ‘Christianising’ non-Christian stories in his operas appeared first on Catholic Herald.