HAVING spotlighted the ladies of its chorus in Suor Angelica, Opera North turns its attention to the tenors and basses in Billy Budd. Expanded to 40 voices, they provide a magnificently angry foundation in Britten’s nautical tragedy, in a new production by Orpha Phelan.

Where the chorus is invariably riveting, the rest of the evening is more equivocal. We need the tang of the ocean, something indeed to explain the need for rigid discipline. We do not get it in Leslie Travers’s set, which is barely naval apart from some hammocks. The rest resembles a cheap mock-up in an abandoned warehouse, not a proud ship o’ the line.

The principals could hardly be better chosen from among British ranks, and indeed all sing impressively. They do not however cohere. Best of them is Alan Oke’s vacillating Captain Vere, seen reminiscing in retirement at the start and finish. With exemplary diction, he is particularly persuasive at Budd’s trial, where his face is contorted with bitter remorse, before he turns latter-day Pontius Pilate.

York Press:

Roderick Williams as Billy Budd, Eddie Wade as Donald and Daniel Norman as Red Whiskers with members of the cast and the Chorus of Opera North. Picture: Clive Garda

Opposite him Alastair Miles, though in superb voice, is altogether too avuncular as Claggart, where menace should be streaming from every pore. We never really divine how he feels; the homosexual element in E M Forster’s libretto is bypassed.

It is not made any easier for him by Roderick Williams’s Billy Budd: a jolly Jack-the-lad figure, whose fatal punch comes out of nowhere. His splendid baritone is not matched by volatility of temperament, and his hanging is fudged.

The standard of singing is just as high among the lesser roles, and the orchestra under Garry Walker is especially alive in the kitchen-sink department. Great music, less than powerful drama.

Opera North in Billy Budd; Grand Opera House, Leeds, further performances on October 21, 27 and 29, then on tour; www.operanorth.co.uk