John Shirley-Quirk

A version of Benjamin Britten's opera based on the Melville story. Will the virtuous young sailor Billy Budd be hanged for murder?

Gustav Von Aschenbach, a passionate composer, arrives in Venice as a result of wanderlust and there meets a young man by whose beauty he becomes obsessed.

A family conflict ensues after Owen, the youngest of the proud military family Wingrave, expected to continue the family tradition and become a soldier, rejects violence and war and proclaims himself a pacifist.

Tony Palmer's documentary about the staging of Britten's choral work.