On 14 June the Chœur d’enfants de l’Orchestre de Paris presented a new staging of Benjamin Britten’s The Golden Vanity at the Philharmonie de Paris, conducted by Edwin Baudo and directed by Mirabelle Ordinaire. In France the piece has previously been staged by the Opéra d'Angers, Opéra de Lyon, and Théâtre de Caen.
Britten’s ‘vaudeville’ is scored for a double choir of trebles accompanied by piano. Based on an old English ballad (The Sweet Trinity) adapted by Colin Graham, it tells the story of a sea battle with Turkish pirates, with the day saved by a humble cabin-boy. The story takes on a darker edge, as the boy is double-crossed by a treacherous sea-captain who refuses to keep the promise of his daughter's hand in marriage and lets the hero drown. In the coda, the boy returns, recalling perhaps the conclusion of 1965’s Curlew River.
Folk song is at the heart of the work, albeit in a more uneasy mood supplied by the score’s dissonances and chromaticism; it also contains several allusions to Britten’s 1955 seafaring opera Billy Budd. The work is available to perform in German, French, and Italian translations; Britten intended the work to be performed “in costumes but without scenery”, the action supported by a few basic props: telescopes, rope, and a drum to emulate the sound of cannon fire.
Lasting around 17 minutes, The Golden Vanity was composed for the Wiener Sängerknaben for the 1967 Aldeburgh Festival, who then toured the work internationally. The work was also performed and recorded by the Wandsworth School Boys’ Choir, with whom Britten was a regular collaborator, writing Children’s Crusade – his brittle cantata after Bertolt Brecht – for them in 1969.