Willy Decker to Speak about the Show

On the eve of the Russian premiere of Benjamin Britten’s opera Billy Budd, Willy Decker, the director recreating the famous Vienna State Opera production in St. Petersburg, is to meet colleagues from the world of theatre. The acknowledged master of world opera direction, working in Russia for the first time, will host an audience with representatives of the St. Petersburg theatre scene, tutors and students from universities specialising in the arts, and journalists. The director plans to talk about the concept behind his interpretation of Britten’s work. The discussion will be held on 23 January, the day of the dress rehearsal, at 15.00.

In an article on Billy Budd, the director noted: „There are such things as ‘ships of fools’, ‘ghost ships’ and ‘ships of dreams’, but the HMS Bellipotent, the setting for Billy Budd, is perhaps a ship of ‘humankind’, a small, unstable fragment of the world, a floating kingdom. Whilst Noah’s Ark was a ship of peace, this is a ‘ship of humankind’, a ship of discord bearing the curse of original sin — man’s hostility towards man. There are two types of hostility shown here: the war between nations as the external subject matter, and the war between specific individuals, which acts as a direct, internal challenge to the action. However, both types of hostility are dependent on one another and are inseparably intertwined as the mysterious extension to the dark side of human nature that we call ‘evil’.“