Focalization and masculine subjectivity in the early operas of Benjamin Britten.

Abstract

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Benjamin Britten's operas remain in the opera repertory worldwide. Whereas scholarship before Britten's death treated him and his works with deference, scholarship after Britten's death addressed undiscussed aspects of his life and implicit themes in his works. Some scholars brought Britten's sexuality to bear upon interpretation of his operas; other scholars cautioned against employing this analytical strategy. Lost in the fray were discussions of his musico-dramatic technique, the artful nature of which might explain the effect his operas have on audiences perhaps unsympathetic to the themes they explore. After the crosscurrents of Britten studies are mapped in chapter 1, the ontology and narratology of modern opera are considered in chapter 2. Seeking to locate Britten's early operas---<italic>Peter Grimes</italic> (1945), <italic> The Rape of Lucretia</italic> (1946), and <italic>Albert Herring</italic> (1947)---within an operatic tradition that celebrates narrative, this dissertation engages with works by Edward T. Cone and Carolyn Abbate. Aspects of operatic narratology are explored in dialogue with the work of literary narratologist Mieke Bal; in particular, a model of <italic>focalization</italic>, the musico-dramatic process by which listeners come to hear operas through the ears of <italic>focal singers</italic>, is developed with reference to the operas under study. Seeking then to locate these operas within an operatic tradition that explores notions of subjectivity, this dissertation engages with the work of Gary Tomlinson and others on the externalization of subjectivity in operatic music. A model is proposed in which the subjectivities of Britten's (often masculine) <italic>focalizors</italic> are externalized musically through webs of tonal symbols, the central areas of which mimic the Freudian tri-partite psyche. Chapters 3 through 5 are case studies: a coherent tonal web is found in <italic>Grimes</italic> that tints the opera with the paranoiac subjectivity of the titular fisherman; interactions between the Choruses and mythic characters of <italic>Lucretia</italic> are explored, and one mythic character is suggested to be peculiarly deaf; and the comic conclusion of <italic>Herring</italic> is shown to hinge on focalization. Chapter 6 presents conclusions regarding narrative and masculine subjectivity in these operas and suggests how a similar case study of <italic>Billy Budd</italic> (1951) might begin.