Benjamin Britten, Paul Bunyan (1941)

Britten's first stage work.  I wanted to see it when I was working my way through his catalogue, but until recently, the only video of it was sung in German with German subtitles.  Not ideal.  It's never achieved the popularity of his later works, obviously, but as a completist, I had to see it, and someone recently uploaded a 1998 performance from New York City Opera (presented by Beverly Sills, no less).  It has a WH Auden libretto, and--this is kind of mind-boggling--at the time Britten and Auden were living in New York and sharing a house with Gypsy Rose Lee and Carson McCullers.  THAT. IS. NUTS.

But as for the work itself...well, it's definitely not plot-heavy.  In fact, I was very strongly put in mind of Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny: they're both in some sense "about" America (although this one lacks the overt political edge of that), both of them feature characters who, while named, are nonetheless extremely vaguely defined, and neither has a plot to speak of.  Well, at any rate, what there is is this: Paul--who only appears here as an offstage voice--grows up and gets big (and some random cowboy troubadour sings about his exploits).  He gets some lumberjacks from around the world to work for him, including a Swede named Hel Helson as the foreman.  There's a guy called Johnny Inkslinger working as Paul's, I don't know, accountant.  There's Paul's daughter Tiny (ironic name, don't you see?) who falls in love with the cook, Hot Biscuit Slim.  Helson decides to rebel against Paul, but gets smacked down; we think he's dead for a few minutes, but then he's not, and everything's fine.  In the end, all these characters leave: Hel to work for the government in Washington, Tiny and Slim to New York City (don't think it's specified as to why), and Inkslinger to Hollywood to be a...lumber consultant.  Is that a position in great demand?  Maybe.  Well, that's about all, except that there are stabs throughout at capturing some sort of mythical "Americanness."

So it's sort of hard to know how one seriously one should take all this: an opera (operetta, they call it, although even with a small amount of spoken dialogue, it doesn't really have that feel to me) about Americana written by two Englishmen?  Is this meant to be taken straight, or is it some sort of satire?  And if the former, does it actually succeed at this, or not?  I mean, it really is kind of hard to know: I think, okay, what would you think if this had been written by Americans?  But that doesn't really help!  I still feel like it could go either way!  I suppose my subjective opinion is that it reads like an homage, sometimes successful, sometimes clumsy.  The music certainly points the way to Britten's later work, and although I wouldn't call it transcendent, there are good moments throughout.  It's certainly not a chore to sit through.  But it's definitely understandable that it would be treated mainly as a curiosity.