After the summer break the season at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala continued with an absorbing new production of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, directed by Robert Carsen with sets and costumes by Gideon Davey.

The director staged the action in an appropriately gloomy setting, with little change between the scenes and few pieces of furniture that hinted at the different locations. The tribunal’s benches on which the curtain opened remained visible until the end of the opera, highlighting the Borough’s blaming attitude toward Peter Grimes. An upper level around the stage hosted the chorus, whose contributions gave body to Grimes’ obsessions. On its background, black and white projections showed Grimes’ unsettling stare and the dying boy’s eyes wide open with fear.

I found the cast very compelling vocally, and excellent theatrically. Clearly Carsen had worked thoroughly with the singers and also the boy (a mute role) with each cast member completely immersed in their character. In the title role, tenor Brandon Jovanovich portrayed a deeply tormented Grimes, often introspective, painfully trying to overcome his own solitary and rough nature. At his side, soprano Nicole Car was an outstanding Ellen Orford. She mastered the impenetrable score with no apparent effort, in the meantime picturing a vulnerable yet strong character, passionate but eventually yielding to frustration and dismay.

Among other cast members, baritone Ólafur Sigurdarson was a thoughtful Captain Balstrode, while mezzo Margaret Plummer was a tough and disenchanted Auntie, well accompanied by sopranos Katrina Galka and Tineke Van Ingelgem as the two nieces.

Australian conductor Simone Young could not have found a more suitable title for her debut with the company. She led the orchestra with great involvement, transmitting her deep knowledge and understanding of the score to the orchestra, with touching moments when exploring the troubled feelings of each of the characters and creating an especially evocative effect with the sea interludes. The performance of the chorus, instructed by chorus master Alberto Malazzi, was outstanding. Chorus members sang as if they had a single voice, highlighting the Borough people as being in fact the main protagonist of the opera.

Despite an extremely successful performance the house was far from being full, perhaps on account of the relatively little known title (Peter Grimes has been seen at La Scala only four times from 1947 to 2012), or perhaps because the audience tends to thin down towards the end of the season: a real pity, as this production deserved more attention.