Zachary Woolfe: “Billy Budd is a product of the gay closet. It is an opera composed by a closeted gay man, to a libretto written by Forster, a closeted gay man, based on a novella by a man who scholars often suggest was closeted and that revolves around the attractions of men to other men. … [The opera] reveal[s] a great truth about the closet: It’s boring to watch. Like any magic realm with its languages and codes, it is wholly engrossing only when you’re inside it.”