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'Paul Bunyan' plays like a modern Genesis/creationist story, opening, from nothing, with a talking forest, undisturbed lands waiting for the expansionist adventures of the pioneers. Bunyan engendered by supernatural agency, arrives in this Eden, flagged by pastoral flutes, and sets up a logging company. The first act deals with the recruitment of workers; the second with their unrest and desire to settle down or move on - a potted history of America (wilderness; European pioneers, agriculture, industry, politics, Hollywood - no Civil War or Indians, of course). This narrative, which equates America with the first Garden, the pioneer with a God-approved prophet and capitalism with Mainfest Destiny, is interrupted with flashforwards to future misery, and framed by a balladeer who narrates Paul's unlikely adventures in tall-tale shorthand. Paul, who significantly speaks his part throughout, is at once pioneer, secular 'father'/preacher/guide/Christ figure, genie, spirit of America, Cassandra, American dream, capitalist boss (tough but fair) - when asked, he defines himself: 'I am the Eternal Guest/I am Way/I am Act'.
The hybridity of forms (including an exquisite, fugal duet and exotic proto-Bernstein rhythms; Britten called the film a 'choral operetta'), styles, ideas and tones evoke a multi-cultural melting pot that seems to be progressing towards some great End Of History; but the repetitions in the score and of individual scenes undercut this movement.
The ensemble cast in this recording of the revised opera (1975) are remarkable, submitting to the wry complexities of Auden's mercurial libretto, at once comic, earnest, ironic, satiric, romantic. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House emphasise the restless playfulness of the young Britten, as he veers from slapstick comedy to Blitzstein-like New Deal pageant to anachronistic Cole Porterisms to dark, tense drama. My only complaint refers to the major flaw of all Chandos recordings, the low sound mix, which makes it difficult at times to make out Auden's clear, clever words.
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