From the archive: "Billy Budd" comes to Manchester

Originally published on 15 March 1952Manchester had a chance to see and hear for itself when the Covent Garden Company brought Britten's much-discussed new piece, "Billy Budd," to the Opera House last night. The librettists, E M Forster and Eric Crozier, have shown a fine operatic sense and great imaginative ingenuity in expanding the slender tale, without being unfaithful to Melville, into four acts plus prologue and epilogue. Some critics have suggested that they have "made" Vere the "hero," a...

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