Billy Budd

Billy Budd is an opera by Benjamin Britten, from a libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, was first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 1 December 1951. It is based on the short novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville.
Forster discussed the novel in his Clark lectures at Cambridge University. He had met Britten before the Second World War and they built up a friendship. In 1948, the question arose of whether Forster would provide a libretto for Britten, and by that November, Britten seems to have mentioned Billy Budd as a possibility. In fact, Forster agreed to this project, and worked with Eric Crozier, a Britten collaborator, to write the opera's libretto.