Billy Budd is Benjamin Britten’s masterful operatic take on Herman Melville’s tale of the clash between good and evil set almost entirely aboard a British warship during the Napoleonic Wars.
In the opera’s prologue, Captain Vere, now an old man, thinks back over his career, recalling a what happened under his command long ago.
The innocent Billy Budd is wrongly accused of mutiny by the malevolent master-at-arms Claggart. Billy maintains his innocence, but begins to stammer and then is so frustrated at not being able to speak and answer the accusations that he lashes out and strikes Claggart, who falls to the floor – dead.
Captain Vere convenes a court martial. Billy pleads with Vere to intervene and save him, but Vere upholds the verdict of his fellow officers; Billy is found guilty of murder and condemned to hang. The crew threatens mutiny, to try and rescue Billy, but he warns against this, fearing more executions would follow. At dawn the next morning Billy cries out a blessing to Vere and is then hanged. The crew, still restless is forced to disperse.
Years later, Captain Vere laments his actions, realising that he could have saved Billy.