Britten and Parable-Art

Ritual and parable in Britten’s Curlew River

“…In this version, departing from the Japanese original yet in keeping with the intrusion of the supernatural common to Noh plays (Murray 60), the twelve-year old boy, having now become some local saint after his premature death, finally appears spirit-like to his mother and grants her the peace she has been seeking as a sign of God's grace. Plomer had known Britten for many years and the parable idea must have been no surprise as many of Britten's operas, from the Brecht-influenced Paul Bunyan of 1941 to his recent Midsummer Night's Dream of 1960, set out to deliver a message, in a more or less explicit fashion (Couderc 2004). Thus the Male and Female Chorus of the 1946 Rape of Lucretia harness a Christian interpretation to the age-old Roman story.…”

“…Epilogue 24 Colin Graham's Notes indicate that "no lights should be turned on in the church at the end of the piece until an appreciable pause", thus giving time for the audience to meditate and ponder the mystery in the semi-darkness, in keeping with Britten's almost constant inclusion of epilogues in his operas (Couderc 2004). What is striking is how successfully the Christianisation of the Noh play works despite Plomer's ample borrowings from the original translation and how the "Zen-Buddhist bits" were given a Western flavour, more familiar to Britten and his audiences, including the change from the Japanese pine tree as a symbol of grief to the more familiar yew tree of Western 25 Curlew River certainly points back to the parable tradition of Pilgrim's Progress with the double quest of the Traveller and the Mother, and to the great English tradition of sacred music and oratorio to which the War Requiem gave a bitter twist.…”