In 1966 BBC television commissioned Benjamin Britten to compose an opera for television. He chose to work with Myfanwy Piper, who had provided the libretto for his opera setting of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw; and, for this new project, the two of them turned to a shorter story by the same author, “Owen Wingrave.” The result was a two-act opera of the same title, completed in 1970 and first broadcast in 1971. The protagonist is a young man who chooses pacifism in opposition to his family heritage of ancestors, all of whom had made their careers in the military. Britten himself was a pacifist; and, in many respects (both literally and musically), the opera constitutes a reflection on his 1962 War Requiem, with its uncompromising settings of Wilfred Owen’s dark poems about the realities of World War One.
Classical TV is currently offering free access to a new production of this opera with baritone Gerald Finley in the title role. Kent Nagano conducts the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, and the staging is by Margaret Williams. Like The Turn of the Screw the opera is based on a ghost story, but in Owen Wingrave the ghosts do not have singing roles. However, one can appreciate that Britten and Piper had television in mind in the considerable mobility of the settings and with the conception of the ghosts in terms of silent parts.
The ghosts are certainly critical to the plot. One is an ancestor who, as a child, had also rejected the prospect of a future in the military; and the other is that child’s father, whose harsh punishment presumably caused the child’s death. Owen suffers a similar fate but through far more convoluted circumstances that basically involve a confrontation with “proper British values.” Britten’s view of those values is as dark as his settings of Owen’s poems had been; and, as had been the case with the War Requiem settings, they are expressed through the stark sonorities of a chamber orchestra.
The staging of the opera has been translated by Williams from the Edwardian times of James’ story to the late Fifties. The shift works because both were times of peace that threatened to boil over into war with little provocation. However, while James’ text predates both the Boer War and the First World War, Britten’s opera was composed in the midst of conflict over whether or not American intervention in Vietnam was justifiable. In other words James wrote the story before things came to a boil, while Britten composed his opera in the midst of one. However, it was also a time when, because opinions were so conflicted over Vietnam, society was more sympathetic to pacifism than it had been at the end of the nineteenth century.
Beyond the shift in time, Williams’ staging rethinks much of the scenario, at least as it has been outlined on the Wikipedia page for this opera. Most important is that she has abandoned the high-level two-act structure, giving the work more of the continuity of a single act in multiple scenes. This is more consistent with James’ conception of a short story and does not pose much of a strain for the view, since the overall duration is about an hour and a half. Indeed, the narrative line amounts to a gradual increase of tension arising from Wingrave’s commitment to pacifism; and Williams seems to have recognized that anything remotely resembling an intermission would interfere with that buildup.
From a musical point of view the production is a model of clarity. Britten is often performed with subtitles in an opera house. In this case, however, all singers execute their parts with the clean diction Britten expected of his singers; and the microphone work captures their efforts faithfully, making subtitles unnecessary. This opera has received staged performances (which have included the Royal Opera House and the Santa Fe Opera); but Williams’ approach clearly underscores the opera’s origins in television. In today’s context of military adventurism in so many different corners of the world, this opera may well be more of a “minority opinion” than it was when Britten conceived it. Nevertheless, however “minority” that opinion may be, this opera makes a case that definitely deserves the attention of a cautionary tale.
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