Billy Budd – review

When it was new in 2010, Michael Grandage's production of Britten's opera was much admired, and in its first revival it once again strikes home as a staging of outstanding perception and visual cohesion; indeed from some points of view, especially the central casting, it has even gained in stature.

This time around, Mark Padmore takes on the ambivalent role of Captain Vere, whose refusal to intervene to save Budd – the press-ganged sailor who accidentally kills the superior officer who has falsely accused him – leads to his execution. Vere's compromised position at the moment of his life he clearly regards as of supreme significance is one of several points where the narrative's metaphysical underpinning rises close to the surface, and Padmore's equivocal tenor – taut if occasionally stretched in its line, decisive in its delineation of text – reveals both the anguish of the captain's dilemma and the inadequacy of his response.

Brindley Sherratt sings Claggart, the sadistic sergeant-at-arms whose passion for Billy leads to a twisted need to destroy him, the deep resonances of his sepulchral bass matching the malevolent physicality of an interpretation that retains a painfully self-hating humanity while outlining a full-scale demonic being. Jacques Imbrailo's Billy, conversely, pulls off the feat of personifying goodness while maintaining a vivid, three-dimensional reality: the scene where Budd comes to Vere's cabin believing he is to be promoted, only to discover the heinous accusation made against him, is almost unbearably moving.

Many of the show's other strengths are familiar from its previous run, including Jeremy White's seen-it-all Dansker and Colin Judson's abject Squeak, while Peter Gijsbertsen has been promoted from Maintop to an intimidated Novice; but there are no weak crew members. Glyndebourne's chorus is on unbeatable form, and the London Philharmonic conveys the sweep of the score under conductor Andrew Davis, while Christopher Oram's extraordinary set once again provides an ideal frame for this drama of a cut-off community lost upon the infinite sea.