In addition to his "regular" operas, Britten also wrote some shorter, less-performed works: these and three on religious themes meant for performance in churches. I feel it would be better for me to watch them prior to the full-fledged operas of his I've yet to see--A Midsummer Night's Dream, Peter Wingrave, Death in Venice--lest they should be made to feel anti-climactic. I mean, I don't KNOW that they would. It just seems like a potential concern. I'm pairing these two together because they're both designed for primarily amateur casts.
Let's Make an Opera!/The Little Sweep was two-part production, as that title may make apparent. Let's Make an Opera! is a play of sorts where a bunch of amateur performers conceive of and rehearse an opera. It's meant to be an introduction to and demystification of the form that also gives the audience a chance to preview the songs they're meant to participate in during the second half of the evening. I watched this out of a sense of completeness, but honestly, I didn't find it very compelling. I don't need to see the form demystified, and if I did, I kind of doubt that this would really do it. There's no plot of drama to it, so what's the use? You certainly don't need to see it to appreciate The Little Sweep.
But speaking of: it's a short, simple opera for children, although Britten's music is definitely for everyone. It's sort of loosely inspired by Blake's two "Chimney Sweeper" poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience, but it lacks the savage irony of the former and the general grimness of the latter. There's an upper-class family with three children and their two cousins. There's an executive chimney-sweep (or something along those lines) named "Black Bob" coming by with his son Clem (very Dickensian characters the both of them) along with Sammy, a young boy who's been sold to them by his impoverished father and is being forced to do very unpleasant chimney-sweeping activites. The kids take it upon themselves to rescue him and let him free, although it's extremely unclear what's going to happen to him, ultimately. Well, in Let's Make an Opera!, the woman telling the story--presented as based on a true one--says that he grew up and became the head gardener, so that's all right for him, I guess. The whole thing is small but fun. It's charming, as intended, and although "opera designed to be sung mainly by amateur children" may set off all sorts of warning bells, it actually works fine, even if it doesn't have the resonance of Britten's best.
How to see this? Well, as far as I can tell, this video is the only one available of Let's Make an Opera! It's a bit cheesy, but that was probably the intent, and it'll satisfy whatever curiosity you have, which is about all you can ask for. And after it and before the opera starts, you can listen to a guy talking to the audience in Norwegian for fifteen minutes, which is exciting. I'm not a huge fan of the version of The Little Sweep attached to it, but you may not have much choice. I liked this televised version more, poor video quality notwithstanding, but unfortunately, it's not complete: there are two parts, but the last ten or fifteen minutes are missing. You'd think there would be a professional-quality DVD somewhere of these short Britten works, but nope. But in any event, I still enjoyed it.
Now, Noye's Fludde. It's about Noah's Ark. It's based on an old mystery play, which is why it's titled like that. I must say, they really sucked at spelling back in the day. They didn't have modern orthographic technology. There's not much to say about the plot, which basically follows the original story, give or take a subplot about Noye's wife ("Mrs Noye"), as she's called not wanting to get on the Ark. So not that dramatically exciting, but the music is gorgeous. If you want to watch a staged version, the only choice is this one, but you probably want to go with this concert version--the other one has very muddy sound such that almost the whole of the libretto is incomprehensible, and there's a huge amount of coughing and occasionally you can hear the people filming it whispering. You don't get a good idea of Britten's genius from it--although from my perspective, there was ONE interesting thing: none of the singers are well-known, but there's a credits role at the end, and singer playing Noye...
I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience when I saw that.
Anyway. Love me some Britten. More later.
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