Jemmy legs is down on you - greeR grimsley talks about claggart
by Beth “Opera Lady” Parker

Greer Grimsley makes a career playing the tortured, the tormented, and the baddest of the bad. It comes with the territory if you’re a bass-baritone . Greer has won many Pittsburgh fans already with his wicked Baron Scarpia in Tosca last season and the title role in The Flying Dutchman in 2003. And a lot of his fans are ladies—sexy plus bad is an irresistible combination!

I was interested to know how Greer prepared for this role, since this is his first time singing John Claggart in Billy Budd. Claggart is a very “modern” villain whose motivations are tantalizingly displayed in Herman Melville’s novella. The opera, with its music by Benjamin Britten and its genius of a libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, explores those motivations with a post-Freudian subtlety.

Britten and his librettists provided Claggart with a soul-bearing monologue. This monologue doesn’t exist per se in Melville’s story but was clearly inspired by Melville’s portrayal of Claggart. Here are some excerpts from that chilling statement.

OL: Knowing what we know about this fascinating character—maybe somebody Anthony Hopkins might play in a movie—how do you go about preparing for it?

GG: First of all, I had read the novella in high school. When I reread the story, I noted the differences between the novella and the opera. I had to find what resonates in the story for me. What struck me was there was a certain innocence in the time that the novel was written. Melville was operating in a higher plane—some of the motivations we see today for Claggart’s persecution of Billy are buried way down.

OL: You’re talking about the theory that Claggart persecutes Billy because Billy is someone he can’t have, can’t control.

GG: Yes. Melville was victimized during his life because of his sexual orientation. It was not an easy time to be homosexual. He had to keep all of that under wraps.

OL: And as the chief disciplinary officer on the ship, maybe he sees Billy as a threat on many levels.

GG: Claggart’s perception is that he has to control his surroundings in order to survive. He’s a victim of his class, his birth. The officers—who despise him—rely on him to run things for them. Claggart’s disdain for the officers stems from his knowledge of how the ship works. They rely on him so they can be above it all and ignore the cruelty of his methods. It’s like our refusing to understand where the nice packaged meat in the supermarket comes from—the slaughterhouse. Better not to think about it.

You have Claggart, a man with a strong superego (in the Freudian sense). Now when Billy comes on the ship, Claggart’s confronted with a person who is ego-less. Billy’s fate is completely left up to others, and Billy’s OK with that. Claggart doesn’t know what to do with this. Billy is an unknown quantity, somebody Claggart doesn’t know how to control. Billy Budd is a person that could even usurp Claggart’s role on the ship.

OL: Billy is so handsome, so attractive, he’s like a magnet for all of the men on the ship. The captain of his former ship, Rights o’ Man, hated to lose Billy. He called Billy his “peacemaker.”

GG: On his old ship, Billy made everything work. And on the Indomitable, that’s Claggart’s whole reason for being, even though he hates it. Claggart recognizes the threat of Billy immediately. So when the officers are so rattled by Billy’s farewell to the Rights o’ Man, he knows immediately how he can use this information to attack Billy.

OL: Why do you think Britten uses major chords—nice music—for Claggart’s first entrance?

GG: He’s showing Claggart’s double nature—he’s eager to please the officers. But as soon as he begins interrogating the men, his music becomes brutal and angular. It’s this double nature of Claggart that drives his mania—he belongs neither to the world of the men nor to the world of the officers. Claggart’s monologue has an amazing psychological insight. I’ve done a lot of research about this, so I’ve read about psychopaths, sociopaths—people with disturbing mental illnesses. They always blame their victims for their feelings.

OL: “O beauty, o handsomeness, goodness! Would that I ne’er encountered you!”

GG: Yes. Claggart blames Billy for what he is feeling: It’s because of you I’m having these feelings. Most aberrant behavior is fear-based. Claggart fears being vulnerable.

OL: Where did this musical characterization come from? Did you know that Forster was deeply disappointed with Britten’s music for this scene? Forster felt that the music should be a brazen, triumphant aria instead of the tortured, twisted monologue Britten came up with.

GG: I think Britten had a precedent for this kind of deep characterization in Wagner. You can see Wagner’s thoughts, his character, in all of the characters of the Ring. For Britten, there must have been somebody in his life who shaped it in a bad way. Britten had to have close personal knowledge of that person in order to write this kind of music.

OL: Britten told a friend that he had been beaten and abused by the headmaster at South Lodge, the school he attended. Maybe that’s the person.

GG: The headmaster even may have uttered those words to him.

OL: You sing these kinds of roles all the time. Do you enjoy it, or is there a part of you that gets somehow infected by the darkness?

GG: Well, my drama training enables me to keep the character separate from me. It’s the healthiest way to do it. You don’t have to become the character to work on the role.

OL: So you wouldn’t describe yourself as a “Method” actor?

GG: Most people don’t know that Stanislavsky actually invented “the  Method” for opera because opera acting used to be so bad. The public still doesn’t think acting is a part of opera. The incredibly challenging trick is to make singing all the time look natural.

	Scarpia makes his devil’s bargain with Tosca (Greer Grimsley with Susan Neves. David Bachmann for Pittsburgh Opera, 2005).

OL: Is it fun to be so bad?

GG: The music and the character are so “out there” and so unlike myself that it’s great to pretend and look at all the possibilities of where the characters could go. They’re all so antisocial.

OL: What about Scarpia?

GG: A role like that is such a gift for anybody to sing. Tito Gobbi said, “Every time I sing this I find something new.” I can’t even remember how many times I’ve sung it.

OL: What’s the difference between Scarpia and Claggart for you?

GG: Scarpia and Claggart are very similar in some ways. But Scarpia is convinced that what he’s doing is right. He’s committing these acts to support the government, and he believes in what he’s doing. But Claggart—there’s still a kernel in Claggart that knows what he’s doing is wrong—a slim piece that’s still left that knows right from wrong. But he can’t stop himself. I think he was abused in some way as a kid—he fits that profile. And we know how the abused children become abusers as adults. That’s how Claggart equates order through manipulation, through control. Anything that threatens that control has to be immediately squashed.

OL: What has changed for you since you’ve been rehearsing in Pittsburgh? Or what do you expect will change?

GG: The rehearsal process is about the subtleties. It’s like having a block of marble. You chip away and start the fine sculpting of the character so that you see as many facets of the character as possible. Then when you hear the orchestra for the first time, you hear the colors the composer meant to bring to the piece. You could compare a pencil drawing to a painting in color. The orchestra is what spurs the character. And then the costumes help you inhabit the role. If it’s a period costume, you’re constricted by the costume, and you can’t move in 21st century ways.

You know, when I was young I wanted to be an archaeologist. I love digging and delving to find things—layers of history, layers of meaning. Playing an opera role satisfies that need for me. It’s fascinating.