Britten Billy Bud.

HAMPSON, ROLFE JOHNSON, HALFVARSON, VAN Allan; Halle Orchestra, Northern Voices, Gentlemen of the Halle Choir, Manchester Boys Choir, Kent Nagano, conductor. Erato 3984-21631-2 (2 CDs). ****

THIS IS THE FIRST RECORDING OF BENJAMIN Britten's original, four-act version of Billy Budd and the first new recording of the work in any form in many years. Britten revised the opera into a two-act entity in 1960, and that was the version he himself recorded. Speculation about the reasons for the revision have to do with the work's length (one intermission instead of three), some critical reservation about the first version and, interestingly, Peter Pears's discomfort with the role of Captain Vere as originally written. The most significant difference between the two versions is an extended scene in which, as the old Act I finale, Captain Vere first encounters Billy Budd and is hailed as a hero by his men. It has been thought that the bravura tenor heroics required of Vere didn't sit easily with Pears (who, of course, created the title role); in the revision, Vere is first encountered (after the prologue, in the body of the opera proper) in a contemplative mood in his cabin. (Pears's vocal powers of contemplation were incomparable.)

Billy Budd is an extraordinary work, with a subtle moral and narrative structure that builds inexorably to a shattering conclusion, and this exciting new recording--vividly engineered and superbly performed--never lets you go. Kent Nagano holds his huge vocal and choral forces, as well as the splendid Halle orchestra, in a commanding grip so that the work's breath-taking line of tension is never released. Even the most lyrical individual scenes have a tautness that builds the opera's dramatic arc, and the Aristotelian tragic values--pity and terror--are fully present.

Britten wrote some of his most moving music for the role of Billy, whose innocence and goodness are given vibrant values; they never become either abstract or cloying. Thomas Hampson's beautifully imagined performance realizes the role's fullest dimensions; his warm, shining baritone projects a youthful masculinity, while his exceptionally subtle response to the text suggests the range of his interior life. The final soliloquy, as the dawn of his hanging approaches, simply cracks one's heart.

Anthony Rolfe Johnson meets the challenges of Captain Vere; his sensitive singing sounds the very embodiment of civilization, while his characterization questions that same civilization. Eric Halfvarson's dark, rounded bass gives Claggart's malignancy an almost mythic dimension. The large cast of singing actors sounds unusually unified as an entity; the recording was made after a series of concert performances, which must have effected its keen preparation.

--Urjo Kareda