Did you know that a full twenty percent of Britten's full-length operas are based on Henry James stories? That is a true fact that sounds sort of interesting for about three seconds until you think about it and think, huh. What am I supposed to do with this? Is there something relevant in James (probably) being a closeted gay man (Britten's own sexuality being a sort of open secret--British society would have had absolutely no problem destroying him if it had been more public--look at Alan Turing--so we're lucky he was able to walk that delicate line)? Actually...there might be something in that. Let's think about it.
So Owen comes from an aristocratic family which has as its central tenet the idea that all the men have to be soldiers. It's kind of their thing. But after some time at a military academy, Owen decides that war is not his thing on principle, and that he's not joining the army. This is to his family's consternation, and after his grandfather the general tries and fails to make him change his mind, he's disinhered. To back up for a moment, there's a legend about the family's ancestral home, where supposedly there was a Wingrave boy who declined to fight another boy; his father summoned him into his room and hit him for this affront, which ended up killing him. Later the father died to, of unclear circumstances. Anyway, their ghosts supposedly still haunt that room. So Owen's cousin Kate, with whom he'd formerly had a thing (that's JUST THE WAY IT WAS with cousins back in the day--get used to it!), and is now even more angry at him than anyone else for his non-war-like ways, accuses him of being a coward and challenges him to sleep in the haunted room to prove he's not (yes, childish, as the libretto acknowledges). He does this, but then he's found, inevitably, dead, from some mixture of the physical and metaphorical, traumas and ghosts.
This subject was clearly up Britten's alley: he and Pears were both pacifists who had been conscientious objectors during World War II, and with the Vietnam War raging--definitely something he would have felt able to address forcefully from conviction. I wasn't really sure about this opera at first; obviously, it's among Britten's lesser-known works.
And yet, I ultimately liked it a lot. I got caught up in the story, and especially in the second act. There's a memorable, ghostly ballad that really stands out. Now, you certainly could accuse it of having a certain lack of nuance. Owen's military school teacher and his wife, as well as his classmate Lechmere, are sort of uncomprehending but still respectful of his conviction, but his family is just horrible in a totally unnuanced way. Why are they this monomaniacal about it? There's just no way to get into their heads. They're cartoons. And...well, yes. Granted. I think that's the weakness, although you can also see it if you want to as an allegory for ghomophobia: blind, unreasoning hatred that can't be justified because it has no rational basis. Whether you think that makes it better or not...is up to you.
This opera was actually originally written for television. This production with Gerald Finley very good in the title role takes advantage of that well: a lot of military imagery where appropriate. I suppose you'd have to say that it's a comparatively minor work, but that just goes to show how good Britten is.
No comments:
Post a Comment