Stirling Newberry:

>The relationship in Peter Grime, the subtext, is of the societal view
>of "the love that dare not speak its name".

Where is the evidence for this? There is no Bosie to Grimes's Oscar!  The
point about Grimes is that he is incapable of love, either of Ellen or
anybody else.  You could conjecture that a loving homosexual relationship
for Grimes might be a fine thing indeed, perhaps just what he needs, but
the point is precisely that no sort of loving relationship is possible for
him.

>More over - the loss of  innocence, and particularly the loss of
>young manhood - is the subtext in Billy Budd, in the War Requiem ...

But the point about Billy, for Britten and I think for Melville too, is not
loss of innocence but preservation of innocence.  In spite of all that has
happened Billy is not brutalised, and goes to his death with remarkable
serenity and still as a child of nature, at one with his shipmates, and a
lover of the endless ocean.  "Starry Vere, God bless you!" The subtext is
not the loss of innocence but the triumph of innocence:  the wholly good
and innocent Billy innocently dispenses justice in becoming the instrument
of the death of the evil Claggart.

As far as the War Requiem goes, of course it was the menfolk, young
and older, who were sent into the trenches to die as cattle.  That does
not make it a gay thing:  it was always thus in war.  And those who died
were sometimes more misguided than innocent, especially those teenage
boys with an agenda (three of my uncles among them) who had to add a year
or two to their real age in their determination to enlist.  The older ones,
conscripts, might have been more innocent.  So it is in Budd.  Red
Whiskers, Dansker, and the rest -- these are the real victims of the savage
regime:  ordinary folk who are pressed into service most unwillingly and
unfairly, while Billy joins HMS Indomitable eagerly and happily.

Alan Moss