A ‘Peter Grimes’ for a new age of mental anguish

A great composer’s first large scale opera is not usually their most famous work (think Verdi’s Oberto, Wagner’s Die Feen, or Strauss’s Guntram). But Benjamin Britten’s first full scale opera Peter Grimes remains his best-known stage work. Establishing him as a major musical force, it is acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s finest operas. When first performed at Sadler’s Wells in 1945, its box-office takings matched or exceeded those of both La Bohème and Madam Butterfly which the company was staging concurrently.

The inspiration for the opera began in 1941 when Britten and his partner Peter Pears were in California and read an article by E. M. Forster on the 18th-century Suffolk poet George Crabbe. Pears found a copy of Crabbe’s works in a second-hand bookshop, and when Britten read his collection of epistolary poems The Borough, containing the tragic story of the Aldeburgh fisherman Peter Grimes, he realised in a flash that this was the world where he belonged and that the subject was “very close to my heart — the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual”.

Back in England in 1942 he asked Montagu Slater to be his librettist. In the redrafting of the story Grimes becomes a more complex character rather than Crabbe’s clear-cut villain, a victim of both fate and society while retaining the darker aspects of his character, and it is left to the audience to decide which version is more true.

In this new production for the Royal Opera, Deborah Warner has updated the setting to the modern day, with a few yobs around and detritus on the beach. Amidst this bleak background, Allan Clayton presents us with a slightly scatty but determined Grimes who terrifies his new apprentice and clobbers his beloved Ellen Orford so that she hurts her ankle and limps for much of the opera. The local yobs later knock her over, which is Ms Warner ’ s method of dealing with the brutality of the local society, though there was a lack of the hidden menace that some productions create.

As his friend Captain Balstrode, Bryn Terfel was a commanding vocal and stage presence, telling him to deal with the disgrace of losing his new apprentice by leaving the Borough, and since he refuses to do that, taking his boat out to sea and sinking her. John Tomlinson’s role as mayor and personification of the law grounded the local community with his firmly resonant bass, and as the apothecary Ned Keene, Jacques Imbrailo sang superbly. Rosie Aldridge as the importunate Mrs Sedley came over well after a slightly weak start, but Swedish soprano Maria Bengtsson’s lovely voice as Ellen Orford was too light at times, and the female quartet in Act II (Ellen, Catherine Wyn-Rogers as Auntie, and her two “nieces”) was a disappointment.

The chorus however was terrific, and I loved their entrance from the storm in small groups for the pub scene of Act I, where Grimes delivers his glorious monologue “Now the Great Bear and Pleiades… are drawing up the clouds of human grief”, facing the wall with his back to the audience. In these days of mental health issues, Deborah Warner has placed her production firmly on the side of sympathy for Grimes, and Allan Clayton responds as directed, exhibiting mental confusion and singing superbly — an excellent Grimes.

Underpinning the performance was the conducting of Mark Elder, which perhaps lacked tension at times, but the terrific playing of the orchestra received sustained applause at the end. Well worth a second visit with the same cast, though I ’ m surprised the Royal Opera apparently could not find a British singer to deliver a stronger-voiced Ellen Orford.

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