Britten's Opera Paul Bunyan

The opera Paul Bunyan (1941) is an early work by Benjamin Britten that met with little success and was consequently set aside by the composer until, 35 years later, he was persuaded to review and revise it and offer it to the public a second time. In the interval Britten had become one of the major opera composers of the century and W. H. Auden, his librettist and one of the greatest English poets, had written successful librettos for other composers. If for no other reason, then, Paul Bunyan had great value for the retrospective glimpse it provided into its creators' early careers. When the work was revived critics and scholars found, as they had hoped, numerous early indicators of ideas and techniques that were to bear fruit in Britten's later works. Most importantly, however, the opera itself was found to be both more substantial than expected and thoroughly enjoyable in its own right. A review of the circumstances of its composition and early reception will be followed by an analysis of the thematic material, structure, and style of Paul Bunyan.

Benjamin Britten (1913-76) was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk near Aldeburgh where he later settled and established an important music festival. Britten began writing music at the age of eight and began studying with his mentor, composer Frank Bridge, in 1926. He studied at the Royal College of Music in 1930-33 and won several prizes for composition. In 1935 "he determined to make his living as a composer" and began his prof

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proximate a more conventional ordering of choruses, arias, and ensembles--indicates Britten's general tendency to move the work more in the direction of a traditional opera. Gradually the solos were spread out more evenly through the opera. But in the original, and the 1976 published version, the solos are clumped in a very limited portion of the work. All five of these numbers (including the later deleted "Love Song") fit between "Slim's Song" No. 12a and "Inkslinger's Regret" No. 16. Even as they rearranged numbers, however, the hybrid nature of the project raised questions beyond the nature of opera per se. The number of sources on which both men drew is surprising in its range. In all the incidental music for films and theater that Britten had composed in the 1930s "he often wrote cabaret songs, blues, and dance numbers, recollections of which appear in his serious compositions." The Cabaret Songs on which he and Auden collaborated drew heavily on Cole Porter, and the blues influence was particularly strong in Our Hunting Fathers. But Paul Bunyan represented a high point in this type of eclecticism for Britten. His reluctance to continue in this vein may also have contributed to the end of his collaborations with Au

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