Should it perhaps be changed again to "Everyone on (boyo) Barrett", do you think? - after all, it's been changed around a fair bit already. Answers in Welsh only, please...

Best,

Alistair (who openly admits that he isn't - and doesn't speak - the Welsh)...

(Okay I confess. I got the impression that Richard wouldn't very grateful if I resuscitated the Barrett on Britten thread, so asked John to change the title before I posted again here.)
Anyway, this is all I wanted to say..

Motivated by listening to a friend talk very movingly about it, I got Billy Budd out of the library (the Britten, Pears recording) and listened to it today.
I liked it very much and it seemed to me that the characters and dramatic shape seem to come out of it better handled than in Peter Grimes. It seems more sophisticated and I think the characters are more persuasive as 'complete' people.

However, one thing that I respond to powerfully in Peter Grimes is the way the music seems to grow out of the unsettled mix of emotion and pyschology in the drama, it seems absolutely inseparable from them, both portraying them in the orchestral sound world, and pushing them and the drama forward at the same time.
Miraculously (for me) the music also functions as a portrait of the geography and atmosphere of the setting, which all seem to fuse and become yet one more of the emotional colours within the drama. It is almost as if the characters don't need to be that well rounded on stage, as all you need to know about them is floating up from the orchestra pit.
 

My impression after one hearing is that in Billy Budd the music seems to have more of a descriptive role, one that accompanies the drama intelligently and beautifully, but not so driven by and inseparably connected to the inner drama.
It is brilliantly evocative (again!) of the sea and the moods within the unfolding tragedy but never really gets under the skin of the charcters in the same way in the same way that PG does. This is the really first proper listening to it that I have had, and, rather cruelly, the copy I listened to started skipping horribly on the last three tracks, so I'm sure I have not made made many of the connections that I will with further listenings.

If anybody has any recommendations of other recordings I would be very interested to hear them.

I agree with Mary.I've been listening to Britten's recording repeatedly since about 1970 and I hear more and more how the music is the essence of the drama at every step,even in the tiniest details.

One could write a book about it,but one instance springs to mind, the role of the Harp in the court martial scene. Compare its blunt reticence when Vere speaks to the officers about their verdict,and the lyrical passage once he is alone and ,one imagines, the tears can flow.