Noye's Fludde

Template:Britten operasNoye's Fludde (Noah's Flood), Op. 59, is a 1957 opera by Benjamin Britten. The text is based on an edition by Alfred W. Pollard of an early 15th-century mystery play from the Chester Mystery Cycle. The opera is written to be performed by a cast primarily of amateurs, and Britten requested it be performed in a church or a large hall but not in a theatre.

Like a Baroque concerto grosso, the orchestra calls for a small concertino ensemble of professionals, consisting of string quintet, recorder, piano (four hands), organ, and timpani. The amateur ripieno orchestra calls for strings, recorders, bugles, hand-bells, and percussion. The audience, which Britten refers to as the "congregation", is invited to join in by singing along in the three hymns inserted into the original text.

The first performance was on 18 June 1958 in Orford Church, Suffolk, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival, with the English Opera Group and a local cast. Owen Brannigan sang Noye, and the conductor was Charles Mackerras.

Background

Chester mystery plays

A 14th-15th century performance of the Chester mystery plays, on a pageant cart

English mystery or "miracle" plays, which originated in the late Middle Ages, were dramatised bible stories performed on Church Feast days in city squares and market places, generally by members of the city's craft guilds. The plays covered the full range of the biblical narrative, from the Fall of Lucifer to the Last Judgement. The cycle of Chester Mystery Plays is one of four that has survived into the 21st century; authorship of the Chester cycle is sometimes attributed to Ranulf Higden, otherwise known as Roger of Chester, a much-respected historian of the city, although there is little direct evidence for this. The plays were apparently revised by an unknown hand in late 15th century, into a format similar to that of contemporary French passion plays.

The Chester plays were very popular; tradition grew that anyone who attended the full cycle would, by papal edict, receive a 1000-day remission from Purgatory. The story of Noah and the Flood, the third play in the cycle, was performed by the Guild of the Drawers of Dee, otherwise known as the water-carriers. A feature of this play, observed by the historian Rosemary Woolf, is the depiction of Noah's wife, and by implication women generally, as disobedient, obdurate and finally abusive—in contrast to the "grave and obedient" Noah, and his patient sons.

After the 16th century Reformation the Church grew less tolerant of mystery plays. A performance in Chester in 1575 is the last recorded from the city until the 20th century, when the cycle was revived as part of Chester's Festival of Britain celebrations in June 1951. This production was received enthusiastically, and was repeated the following year; thereafter it became a regular feature and tourist attraction.

Inception

By the mid-1950s Benjamin Britten was a well-established opera composer whose major works included Peter Grimes (1945), Billy Budd (1951), Gloriana (1953) and The Turn of the Screw (1954). He had also written an opera specifically for child performers, The Little Sweep (1949), and before that had created the cantata Saint Nicolas, premiered during the first Aldeburgh Festival in 1948. In both Saint Nicolas and The Little Sweep Britten combined skilled performers with amateurs; the cantata involved at least two children's choirs, and incorporated two congregational hymns sung by the audience as part of the performance. Britten refined this fusion of professional with amateur forces in The Little Sweep, again using child singers (now doubling as actors), and having the audience sing choruses at appropriate points.

On 10 April 1957 Boris Ford, Head of Schools Broadcasting at Associated Rediffusion (A-R), wrote to Britten, proposing a series of half-hour programmes which "should consist of yourself composing and rehearsing, week by week, a Christmas charade. The purpose of the series would be to provide children with an intimate piece of musical education, by giving them some conception of what composing music amounts to and thus watching a piece of music take shape and in some degree growing with it." Britten replied to Ford's proposal that he was "frantically busy travelling this year, and will have very little time for writing. ... Besides, I feel that with Let's Make an Opera [i.e. The Little Sweep] I have rather done this idea before, and although I firmly intend to write another Opera for Children one day, it would be boring to make it follow the same plan as that piece." He nonetheless suggested they met to discuss possibilities; eventually, on 11 July, Britten, his amanuensis Imogen Holst and Ford met in London. It was agreed that Britten should write an opera for Associated Rediffusion's summer term of school programmes for 1958, and that the subject would be based on a Chester miracle play.

Britten told Boris Ford that "he had indeed for some months or a year vaguely been thinking of doing something with the miracle plays". As early as 1947, Britten had suggested to the writer Eric Crozier that they collaborate on a "children's opera on a Bible story". Crozier gave Britten a volume of the Chester mystery plays, in a version selected and edited by Alfred W. Pollard,) which ultimately became the source for the libretto of Noye's Fludde. Ford and his script editor, Martin Worth, travelled to Aldeburgh, and with Britten looked around at possible churches for the performance. Orford Church was chosen as, unlike most other churches in East Suffolk, its pews were not fixed, so offering a more flexible performing space.

Creation

Britten began planning the opera that August on voyage to Canada (en route to giving a tour with the English Opera Group). He told Colin Graham, at that time the EOG's stage manager, that he wanted him to direct the new opera. Back in England, after a further meeting at Associated Rediffusion's London headquarters on 18 October, Britten began a composition draft in Aldeburgh on 27 October.

Britten had completed about two-thirds of the opera when Ford was dismissed from Associated Rediffusion, allegedly for administrative shortcomings and inexperience. A-R then appeared on the point of withdrawing from the project for financial reasons. However, by November, another independent commercial TV company, Associated Television (ATV) under the chairmanship of Lew Grade, came to the rescue; Grade himself took responsibility for signing the contract and instructed that Britten "should be told to start work on this opera at once".

Britten continued the work even in the midst of his house move from Crag House in the heart of Aldeburgh to the Red House just outside the town; according to a letter he wrote to Edith Sitwell on 14 December, "the final bars of the opera [were] punctuated by hammer-blows" from workmen busy at the Red House. Before he had even finished the composition draft (on 18 December), Britten wrote to the baritone Owen Brannigan, who had sung in several previous Britten operas including Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia, asking if he would take the title role: "Noah, as you can imagine, is a very big part and really carries the whole thing. There is no one I can think of who would do this better than yourself […] If you are interested, and may I say how very much I hope you are, Colin Graham who I think you know, and who has the mammoth task of producing the opera, will get in touch with you and discuss practical arrangements. He will also tell you about a possible television introduction to the work, and repetition a week or so later."

In scoring the opera, Britten included a number of unusual instruments. To represent the first drops of rain, he had the idea of striking teacups with a spoon. However, as Imogen Holst recalled,

he came round to me one afternoon saying that he'd tried it out at tea-time and it wouldn't work. By great good fortune I had once had to teach Women's Institute percussion groups during a wartime 'social half hour', so I was able to take him into my kitchen and show him how a row of china mugs hanging on a length of string could be hit with a large wooden spoon.

Another strikingly unusual detail was the sound of bugles, played as the animals march into the ark: an old school friend of Britten's from Gresham's School, David Layton, was convinced that the bugles of Noye's Fludde recalled the school's Officer Training Corps band practicing in front of the cricket pavilion, where there was a "grand echo", while he and Britten were nearby in the nets.

Another ensemble Britten wrote into the opera was of handbell ringers. According to Imogen Holst

They were members of the local Aldeburgh Youth Club, whom Ben used to invite in every now and then, and give them his foreign stamps, from all those hundreds of letters he got from abroad. And one day, one of the boys said, ‘Well, I’ve got to go now.’ And Ben said, ‘What are you doing?’ And they were practicing handbells. And Ben said, ‘Oh, I’d love to hear them. Will you come and play them to me tomorrow afternoon?’ And so they came, and played in his garden – ‘’Little Brown Jug’’ I think it was. And he was so thrilled that he gave that marvelous moment in Noye’s Fludde to those little boys.

Britten completed the full score of the opera in March 1958, which he dedicated "To my nephew and nieces, Sebastian, Sally and Roguey Welford, and my young friend Ronald Duncan [one of Britten’s godsons]".

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 18 June 1958 (Conductor: Charles Mackerras)
The Voice of God	spoken role	Trevor Anthony
Noye	bass-baritone	Owen Brannigan
Mrs. Noye	contralto	Gladys Parr
Sem	treble	Thomas Bevan
Ham	treble	Marcus Norman
Jaffett	tenor or treble	Michael Crawford
Mrs. Sem	girl soprano	Janette Miller
Mrs. Ham	girl soprano	Katherine Dyson
Mrs. Jaffett	girl soprano	Marilyn Baker
Mrs. Noye's Gossips	girl sopranos	Penelope Allen, Doreen Metcalfe, Dawn Mendham, Beverley Newman
The Raven	silent role	David Bedwell
The Dove	silent role	Maria Spall
Children's chorus of animals and birds; congregation

Synopsis

Noye's Fludde opens with the congregation singing "Lord Jesus, think on me" as Noye enters. The spoken Voice of God tells Noye to build "a shippe". Noye agrees and calls on his family to help. His sons and their wives enter with tools and materials and begin, but Mrs Noye and her Gossips (close friends) mock the project. The cast build the ark on stage.

God tells Noye to fill the Ark with animals, and they enter in groups from all parts of the church, singing or squeaking "Kyrie eleison!" Noye orders his family to board, but Mrs Noye and the Gossips refuse, preferring to drink; the sons carry Mrs Noye on (she slaps Noye's face). Rain begins (roughly tuned teacups called "slung mugs" are struck to give the sound of the first raindrops), building to a great storm. The storm is represented by a passacaglia in which each statement of the theme a new aspect of the storm is represented: for example, trills in the recorders represent the wind and scales in the string section signify waves. At the height of the passacaglia, the congregation sings "Eternal Father, Strong to Save", a Victorian naval hymn by John B. Dykes. When it is calm, Noye sends out a raven saying "If this fowl come not again it is a sign sooth to say, that dry it is on hill or plain." This is a dancer, accompanied by a cello; he never returns. Noye, now knowing that the raven has discovered dry land, sends out a dove accompanied by a solo recorder (played with fluttering tongue to imitate a dove's cooing), which brings back an olive branch. Everyone leaves the Ark, singing "Alleluia" accompanied by bugle fanfares. To the sound of handbells, God promises never to send another flood, with the rainbow as a sign. The cast file out singing Addison's "The spacious firmament on high" to Tallis's Canon, leaving Noye alone to receive God's blessing.

Performance history and reception

Premiere

The first production of Noye's Fludde was directed by Colin Graham, who also designed its set, with costume designs by Ceri Richards. To aid rehearsals, Britten prepared a 'demo' record of the opera with himself at the piano, and the various roles sung by him, Peter Pears, Imogen Holst, the composer's two sisters and Colin Graham. John Schlesinger made a documentary for the BBC's Monitor programme of the production as it was being rehearsed.

Apart from Noye and his wife, taken respectively by the professional singers Owen Brannigan and Gladys Parr (her last role before retirement), and the spoken role of God, taken by the Welsh bass, Trevor Anthony, the other solo roles were taken by children selected from widely-held auditions: Michael Crawford, described by Graham as "a very recently broken-voiced young tenor", took the role of Jaffett. Mrs Noye's gossips were originally to be performed by girls from a Suffolk school, but when the headmistress heard rumour about the "dissolute" parts they were to play she had her pupils withdrawn from the production. The various forces of mostly child performers included handbell ringers from Leiston Modern School; a percussion group, whose instruments included the slung mugs, from Woolverstone Hall School; recorder players from Framlingham College; and bugle players from the Royal Hospital School, Holbrook.

The first performance, staged at Orford Church on 18 June 1958, was conducted by Charles Mackerras, who had taken part in several productions at past Aldeburgh festivals. The director, Colin Graham, recalled: "The large orchestra (originally 150 players) includes strings, allowing for three grades of proficiency, and the whole lot, with the professional stiffening of a piano duet, string quintet, recorder and one percussion player, were massed around the font of Orford Church while the opera was played out on a stage erected at the end of the nave." One critic of the opening performance noted "Charles Mackerras conducted the widespread forces, actually moving round a pillar to be able to control all sections in turn."

Martin Cooper of the Daily Telegraph recalled: "The white walls of Orford Church furnished an ideal background to the gay colours of Ceri Richards's costumes and the fantastic head-dresses of the animals. In fact, the future of the work will lie in village churches such as this and with amateur musicians, for whom Britten has written something both wholly new and outstandingly original."

The general critical reception was warmly enthusiastic. The Times noted the effectiveness of Britten's setting of the mystery play:

Modern man can enter the medieval mind by an exercise of the historical imagination when he is confronted with one of these earthy plays, but always he has to keep at bay the feeling that it is, inevitably, quaint. Music saves him the effort. He is used to the employment of music for conveying him to many different planes of reality and enabling him to breathe naturally on any of them. It is Britten's triumph that in this musically slender piece he has brought to new life the mentality of another century by wholly modern means. These means included a miscellaneous orchestra such as he alone could conceive and handle".

A broadcast of Noye’s Fludde was transmitted by ATV on 22 June 1958, the first Britten opera to be televised.

Later performance history

After the premiere the next four performances took place over two days in November 1958 in Southwark Cathedral, featuring the same principals as the première; all four pages of the programme are reproduced in the Facts and Figures category of the Noye's Fludde Harpenden blog, as well as some detailed recollections of the project by one of the chorus of animals, Richard Jones.

In the United States, the opera was heard on the radio in New York City on 31 July 1958 and, also in New York in the School of Sacred Music of Union Theological Seminary on 16 March 1959, the US premiere was given. The first complete radio broadcast was given on 30 November 1964 by the BBC Northern Ireland Home Service.

Performances have been presented by community organisations in churches and schools. One of the early US productions of this type was given at The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia under the direction of John Langstaff.

In September 2005 Noye's Fludde became the first opera to be produced in a zoo: this was a production by the Internationales Kammermusikfestival Nürnberg in Nuremberg Zoo, directed by Nina Kühner, conducted by Peter Selwyn, with Jonathan Gunthorpe (Noye), Andrea Baker (Mrs Noye) and Gerd Lohmeyer (God).

"Noah's Flood": special performance in a rehearsal hall at The Santa Fe Opera, 11 August 2013

Subsequent productions in zoos have been presented by the NI Opera in Northern Ireland and the KT Wong Foundation, in Belfast Zoo, directed by Oliver Mears and conducted by Nicholas Chalmers, with Paul Carey Jones as Noye and Doreen Curran as Mrs Noye. The same production was also performed in October 2012 at the Beijing Music Festival, this being the Chinese premiere of the work, and the first full performance of a Britten opera in China.

Britten's centenary year 2013 prompted numerous performances across the UK, with many presented by school groups in public places such as cathedrals, churches, schools, or community centres. Some were mounted by music festivals such as the Cheltenham Music Festival and the Thaxted Festival. The Britten-Pears Foundation also supported performances in June.

Professional opera companies including the New Zealand Opera,The Santa Fe Opera, and the New Orleans Opera, which mounted its first production of any Britten opera, used local children singing and performing alongside professionals.

An Aldeburgh Festival production to wrap up the centenary year was staged in November in Britten's home-town of Lowestoft with Andrew Shore as Noye, and was nationally broadcast in Britain.

Recordings

Year	Cast: Noye (Noah), Mrs. Noye, Voice of God	Conductor, Opera House and Orchestra	Label
1961	Owen Brannigan Sheila Rex, Trevor Anthony	Norman Del Mar, English Chamber Orchestra and East Suffolk Children's Orchestra and Children's Chorus	Audio CD: Decca (London), Cat: 425,161-2 Decca, Cat: 436,397-2 (Also contains a recording of Britten's The Golden Vanity).
1985	Wolfgang Pailer, Beatrice Lienert, Siegfried Baumgartner	Irmingard Goubeau, Orchestra and Chorus of Albert-Einstein-Gymnasium. (Recording of a performance given in a German translation by Ludwig Landgraf).	LP: FSM, Cat: 53 754
2007	José Antonio López, Marisa Martins, Unk	Emilio Aragón, Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid. (Sung in a Spanish version under the title El Diluvio de Noé)	Audio CD: DG, Cat: 002894766374

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

• Kennedy, Michael (2001), "Benjamin Britten" in Holden, Amanda (ed.), The New Penguin Opera Guide, New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001. ISBN 0-14-029312-4
• Operabase.com list of performances from 1 January 2011 and forward Retrieved 13 August 2013

Other sources

• Whittall, Arnold, "Noye's Fludde" in Stanley Sadie, (Ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. Three, p. 631. London: MacMillan Publishers, Inc. 1998 ISBN 1-56159-228-5

External links

• The Thirde Pageante of Noyes Fludd as presented by the Waterleaders and Drawers of Dee.