Brilliant Britten

By Lawrence Malkin

The opening of Benjamin Britten's latest opera, Death in Venice, poses the question of why no composer has previously tried to set Thomas Mann's writings to music. One reason may be that his themes were often heavily bourgeois. On the other hand, Mann's tales were frequently structured like musical compositions--ranging from the symphonic patterns of The Magic Mountain to the leitmotivs of Death in Venice, which would seem to be eminently transformable into opera. Britten has done just that, and the result is brilliant.

As the centerpiece of the current Aldeburgh Festival, Britten's Death in Venice is a spare, cerebral music drama that remains faithful to Mann's image-laden tale of frustrated pederasty. Along with Librettist Myfanwy Piper, he has succeeded in drawing a sense of intense theatrical conflict from Mann's static interior monologue.

The opera was written for Tenor Peter Pears, Britten's lifelong companion musically as well as personally. It is the latest in an imperiled series of major artistic collaborations. Britten, 59, recovering from open-heart surgery, was unable to attend rehearsals or take his customary place at the podium for the opera's premiere a fortnight ago. Steuart Bedford, an Aldeburgh regular, conducted in Britten's stead.

Pears, at 63, is fading of voice, but nevertheless holds the stage for virtually the entire opera. It is a remarkable feat of endurance. In white suit and panama, he unifies the performance completely, whether in recitatives of improvised rhythm chanted to the plink of a single piano or sitting silently in a canvas chair as an observer. Gone are the Pears-shaped tones of the young lyric tenor. In their place now emerge dramatic powers of characterization. As a noted German author captivated by a winsome Polish boy in Venice, Pears' body seems literally to disintegrate with frustration.

Much of that disintegration takes place as he watches his beloved Tadzio dance on the beach. The Royal Ballet's 19-year-old Robert Huguenin (who, true to the novella, never speaks) is sinuous without being sickly sensual. This restraint probably errs in the excessively angular choreography Sir Frederick Ashton has designed for the cavorting boys on the beach. Yet it is an effective use of ballet as a symbolic vehicle.

The other major roles include an old fop who presages decay, and a satanic barber who rouges the hero's face for his final and failing encounter with Tadzio. All are emanations of death, and all are sung with a consummate leaven of evil power by another Britten regular, Bass-Baritone John Shirley-Quirk.

Britten's characteristic eclecticism dominates the score. As always, he fits great economy of means to his amazing instrumental versatility: a platonic ode to Phaedrus is decorated with a harp; the oncoming plague is heralded by a growling dark tuba. The overture to Venice is glitteringly warm, like the Adriatic itself.

After the current run at the 670-seat Aldeburgh Festival Theater, opera and cast move to the Royal Opera at Covent Garden this fall, and a year later to New York's Metropolitan Opera. Although such an intimate drama could well be lost in those huge houses, it is clear that the ailing master of English opera has fused moral theme with artistic creation into what Thomas Mann himself might have hailed as Britten's Gesamtkunstwerk. *Lawrence Malkin

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