An undeniable success.
Marie-Aude Roux, Le Monde
This Billy Budd ranks among the most exemplary productions currently to be seen in Europe.
Jan Brachmann, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Richard Brunel’s staging skilfully navigates the troubled waters of Benjamin Britten’s opera, illuminating its human and moral issues. Great subtlety carries this drama of the individual confronting the collective to extraordinary heights of emotion.
Philippe Venturini, Les Echos
LThe production is deeply human and eloquent, bringing the space to life through mobile scaffolding that evokes cabins, decks and masts with remarkable fluidity.
Christian Merlin, Le Figaro
This is the first time the work has been performed in Lyon, and Richard Brunel, both director of the Opéra and stage director of this production, has done everything to make its entry into the repertoire a memorable one.
Sophie Bourdais, Télérama
Ten minutes of applause on opening night… Billy Budd is not only being performed at the Opéra de Lyon for the first time, but in a production that will make history—the finest staging Richard Brunel has created to date.
Luc Hernandez, Tribune de Lyon
In Lyon, a splendid Billy Budd.
Alma Toretta, Il giornale della musica
And this first Lyon Billy Budd, paced like a thriller, grips the audience from beginning to end.
Sophie Bourdais, Télérama
It is rare for a production to win unanimous approval from both public and critics. Such is the case with the Opéra de Lyon’s new production of Billy Budd.
Alma Toretta, Il giornale della musica
Richard Brunel’s staging is extraordinarily poetic.
Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, France Musique
Richard Brunel presents a new staging of the English composer’s masterpiece, successful in every respect: vocally, musically and theatrically.
Alma Toretta, Il giornale della musica
This Billy Budd will remain in the memory for a long time.
Hugh Canning, Oper !
At the end of his production, Richard Brunel creates a male Pietà, a scene of lamentation through which the director reveals both the conflict between law and grace and the incomprehensibility of God’s presence in a hard-hearted world.
Jan Brachmann, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Within this stylised setting, Richard Brunel’s meticulous direction of the singers proves exceptionally effective, revealing the workings of the characters’ psychology with striking clarity.
Stephane Lelièvre, Bachtrack
Both the work and the staging are at once queer and traditional. They defy categorisation within the culture wars of our time.
Jan Brachmann, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Richard Brunel stages this rare masterpiece with great power.
Oriane Jeancourt, Transfuge
The mists are particularly beautiful, beginning with the one that opens the production, across which a model of the Indomitable, Captain Vere’s ship, sails. The colours deliberately avoid conventional shades of blue, drawing instead on the blue-grey and yellowish-white ochres of William Turner’s storm paintings.
Alma Toretta, Il giornale della musica
With masterful theatrical intelligence, Richard Brunel brings the ship, its movement and the mist surrounding it vividly to life.
Oriane Jeancourt, Transfuge
Stephan Zimmerli’s inventive set design plays on the many analogies between theatrical machinery and the sailors’ daily life: using the full width, depth and height of the stage, the space itself becomes a ship in motion.
Sophie Bourdais, Télérama
In an almost incessant yet always fluid ballet, the ship constantly metamorphoses, opening up spaces or creating cramped confines and thus faithfully conveying life aboard a vessel. As conceived by the director and his designer, a clear connection between theatre and seafaring emerges.
Jean-Marc Proust, Opera magazine
The predominantly French audience held its breath before rising to its feet: a tribute to the impact of Brunel’s effective staging and Britten’s opera.
Hugh Canning, Oper !
A creative staging, dominated by razor-sharp direction of the performers—highly charged, refined, subtle and intelligent in every detail, down to the most discreet movement made by each member of the chorus!
Patrick Favre-Tissot-Bonvoisin, Résonances lyriques.
A masterful Billy Budd! With equal clarity and poetic effectiveness, Richard Brunel conveys the dual time frame of the adaptation of Melville’s novella.
Gilles Charlassier, classicagenda.fr
A splendid visual achievement. A reading of profound psychological intelligence.
Florent Coudeyrat, Classiquenews.com
Richard Brunel’s virtuosic direction of the performers—from the fourteen soloists to the entire company of sailors, chorus, technicians and extras—offers a magnificent reading of the drama, both in its most intimate moments and in the large ensemble scenes.
Olivier Brunel, ConcertoNet.com
This claustrophobic world is recreated with genius in Richard Brunel’s staging, with Stephan Zimmerli’s sets evoking the ship against a marine backdrop with only a few elements.
Jorge Binaghi, Connessi all’Opera
Bruno de Lavanère’s costumes and Laurent Castaingt’s truly remarkable lighting—which does far more than simply illuminate the stage—are equally effective.
Jorge Binaghi, Connessi all’Opera
The staging is precise and intense: the choral scenes are lively and convincing throughout, while the confrontations between the principal characters are raw and human. Brunel directs his performers with a sure hand, without resorting to folklore or tasteless modernisation.
Jos Hermans, Leidmotief
Billy Budd
Benjamin Britten
Opera in two acts (second version)
Libretto by Edward Morgan Forster and Éric Crozier,
based on the short story by Herman Melville
1964
Musical Director Finnegan Downie Dear
Stage Director Richard Brunel
Set Designer Stephan Zimmerli
Costume Designer Bruno de Lavenère
Lighting Designer Laurent Castaingt
Dramaturg Catherine Ailloud Nicolas
Chorus Master Benedict Kearns
Chorus Master Children Choir Clément Brun
Vocal Coach Studio Kirsten Schoetteldreier
Assistant Music Director Michael Cobb
Assistant Director Ester Pieri
Production Opéra de Lyon – Co-production Hanover Staatsoper
Cast
Paul Appleby
Sean Michael Plumb
Derek Welton
Rafal Pawnuk
Daniel Miroslaw
Oliver Johnston
Michal Marold
Scott Wilde
Willam Morgan
Filipp Varik
Guillaume Andrieux
Paolo Stupenengo
Antoine Saint-Espès
Orchestra, Chorus, Studio and Children choir Opéra National de Lyon