Billy Budd

During the 2024–25 season, American composer Jake Heggie brings his towering modern masterpiece Moby-Dick to the Met for the first time. Nearly three quarters of a century earlier in his native England, Benjamin Britten unveiled his own sea-soaked opera based on the writings of Herman Melville: Billy Budd. The work arrived at the Met in 1978 and has made rare, but always eagerly anticipated, returns in the years since. The most recent was recorded during the 2011–12 season and starred baritone Nathan Gunn in the title role, an idealistic young sailor aboard the HMS Indomitable during the French Revolutionary Wars. In one of his signature roles, veteran bass-baritone James Morris was Budd’s nemesis, the malevolent master-at-arms John Claggart, with tenor John Daszak as the principled Captain Vere. Maestro David Robertson was at the helm to conduct the mighty forces of the Met Orchestra and Chorus in one of the pinnacles of the 20th-century operatic repertoire.