IT is the centennial year of "Billy Budd, Sailor," Herman Melville's last book, a novella. Melville wrote it in the last five years of his life, but it was published posthumously only in 1924.

Benjamin Britten’s “Billy Budd” based on the novel by Herman Melville comes to mind, as does American composer Carlisle Floyd’s “Of Mice and Men,” adapted from the John Steinbeck novella.

By Zachary Woolfe The opening line of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” is ... A piece, in other words, much along the lines of “Billy Budd,” Benjamin Britten’s opera based on another ...