Vienna State Opera - Peter Grimes Peter Grimes Es gibt keine Produkte, die dieser Auswahl entsprechen. Beschreibung Peter Grimes - Benjamin Britten Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from the narrative poem, "Peter Grimes," in George Crabbe's book The Borough. The "borough" of the opera is a fictional village which shares some similarities with Crabbe's, and later Britten's, own home of Aldeburgh, a town on England's east coast. It was first performed at Sadler's Wells in London on 7 June 1945, conducted by Reginald Goodall, and was the first of Britten's operas to be a critical and popular success. It is still widely performed, both in the UK and internationally, and is considered part of the standard repertoire. In addition, the Four Sea Interludes were published separately (as Op. 33a) and are frequently performed as an orchestral suite. This story of an outsider who suffers from the pressures of society and ultimately breaks him.

Peter Grimes, located in the fishing environment in the East of England, is a timeless parable about persecution, emotional loneliness and the attempt to gain a place in society. The production, directed by Christine Mielitz tells this straightforward and clear, showing the tortured soul of the title character in a cold atmosphere. Following the resumption of Billy Budd in 2011, another of his major operas is at the Vienna State Opera now rehearsed - and is also a contribution to the Britten-2013! Vienna State Opera - Peter Grimes Vienna State Opera There are no products matching the selection. Description Peter Grimes - Benjamin Britten Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from the narrative poem, "Peter Grimes," in George Crabbe's book The Borough. The "borough" of the opera is a fictional village which shares some similarities with Crabbe's, and later Britten's, own home of Aldeburgh, a town on England's east coast.

It was first performed at Sadler's Wells in London on 7 June 1945, conducted by Reginald Goodall, and was the first of Britten's operas to be a critical and popular success. It is still widely performed, both in the UK and internationally, and is considered part of the standard repertoire. In addition, the Four Sea Interludes were published separately (as Op. 33a) and are frequently performed as an orchestral suite. This story of an outsider who suffers from the pressures of society and ultimately breaks him. Peter Grimes, located in the fishing environment in the East of England, is a timeless parable about persecution, emotional loneliness and the attempt to gain a place in society. The production, directed by Christine Mielitz tells this straightforward and clear, showing the tortured soul of the title character in a cold atmosphere. Following the resumption of Billy Budd in 2011, another of his major operas is at the Vienna State Opera now rehearsed - and is also a contribution to the Britten-2013!

Peter Grimes | Opera | New National Theatre, Tokyo New National Theatre, Tokyo OPERA HOUSE 2013 marks the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten, who is counted among the greatest opera composers of the 20th century. The NNTT Opera's third season under Artistic Director Otaka Tadaaki will open with Peter Grimes. There is much greater emphasis on the dramatic elements in Britten's work as compared to that of other British composers. Of the many operas he composed, his second, Peter Grimes, is often regarded as his finest; it is also one that the Japanese people can easily relate to. The opera is set in a fishing village, and depicts the protagonists living in an insular community and the cruelty of their fates. In talking about the tale, Otaka Tadaaki has said that although it can be easy to see Peter Grimes as a villain, in fact it is the villagers around him who are the problem. We can draw parallels between the opera and the life of the composer himself; for roughly half his life, Britten lived in a committed relationship with his partner (tenor Peter Pears) in Aldeburgh in the eastern county of Suffolk, England.

So Britten, too, suffered the stares of a disapproving society. This will be the first British Opera performed at the NNTT. Singing the title role will be Stuart Skelton, a Heldentenor who has performed in theatres around the world. English soprano Susan Gritton will sing the role of Ellen, the only character who understands Peter. Ms. Gritton has made the role part of her repertoire. A fine cast of international and Japanese singers will round out the ensemble. Another element that is sure to impress is Willy Decker's production design. Decker's production of Die Soldaten (The Soldiers) caused a sensation when it played at the NNTT in 2008. The stage settings, costumes and props for Peter Grimes will be rented from the Théatre Royal de la Monnaie in Belgium. Otaka Tadaaki has said he feels that, of the many productions of Peter Grimes, this one in particular (which premiered in 1994) best conveys the complexities of the work.

Conductor Ono Kazushi received favorable notice for his performance in the 2004 production of Peter Grimes at La Monnaie, at which he was serving as musical director at the time. The opera was performed at the Royal Opera House in London in July that year, and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production in 2005. SYNOPSIS The opera is set in eastern England, in a fishing village on the North Sea. The year is around 1830. The fisherman Peter Grimes is appearing at an inquest at the town hall. He is being questioned about the death of his apprentice. The two went out fishing and had a good catch, but the boy was lost at sea in a storm. Grimes says the death was an accident and insists he is innocent. But around town he is known as an unsociable and impetuous man, and the villagers have their suspicions. The death is ruled an accident, but Grimes is warned not to take on another apprentice. Grimes is consoled by Ellen, the town schoolmistress and a widow, and Balstrode, a retired merchant skipper.

After the incident, Grimes is ostracized by the people of the village, and he struggles to handle the work of fishing by himself. Ellen feels compelled to help. She finds a boy at an orphanage to be Grimes's apprentice. The boy is delivered to Grimes at the Boar, a local tavern. Then one Sunday, she sees the boy and becomes suspicious after seeing the state of his clothes and a bruise on his neck, and she questions Grimes about it. Grimes is preparing to go out fishing with the boy, even though it is the Sabbath. Grimes plans to marry Ellen, and has been working all he can to earn more money. Despite Ellen's opposition, Grimes tells the boy to go out the back and climb down along the cliff to the shore; as he does, the boy slips and falls to his death. Some days later, a rumor begins to spread around the village. The boy has not been seen, and the villagers suspect that Grimes may have killed him. Once again, an investigation begins. Balstrode tells an exhausted Grimes to sail out and sink his boat and take his own life. Ellen tries to stop him, but Grimes sets off.

The next morning, there is a report from the coast guard of a ship sinking. But no one shows any interest, and they go about their business as if nothing has happened. Forever young: Benjamin Britten turns 100 - Creative Tourist Forever young: Benjamin Britten turns 100 Femke Colborne Posted 03 Oct 2013 As Opera North celebrates Benjamin Britten’s centenary with a trio of new productions, we talk to director Richard Mantle about the composer’s fascination with youth. Everyone is talking about Benjamin Britten – no, not the film starring Brad Pitt where a man quite disconcertingly starts ageing backwards (that would be Benjamin Button), but the British composer best known for his pioneering operas. This year would have been Britten’s 100th birthday, and his work is being celebrated all over the world in what is probably the biggest ever global celebration of a single British composer. Britten had something in common with his almost-namesake Benjamin Button, though: a fascination with childhood and the innocence of youth.

He devoted much of his life to working with young people, and some of his critics accused him of failing to ever really grow up, of maintaining a childlike, black-and-white view of the world. But it was his extensive work with young people and amateur musicians that led Britten to specialise in music involving a theatrical element – and ultimately shaped his pioneering approach to opera. Opera North leads the centenary celebrations this year with a full season of three Britten productions: Peter Grimes , A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Death in Venice . The first is a revival of a 2006 production by Mamma Mia! director Phyllida Lloyd; A Midsummer Night’s Dream is another revival; and Death in Venice a brand new production. Its premiere on 17 October will mark a milestone for Opera North, as it will have performed all of Britten’s main stage operas. Britten’s operas were revolutionary because of their focus on communicating a story. Most of them are notable, for example, for not containing any traditional arias (where a character is awarded the stage to indulge in a sort of musical soliloquy; generally a chance for the composer to show off).

“Britten’s operas have a format unlike most other operas and there is always a very strong narrative,” says Richard Mantle, director of Opera North. “He often used literary links as a starting point and he wanted people to understand and be engaged with his operas as though they were going to a play. He always wrote operas to be accessible to the audience.” He was a non-conformist; his operas nearly all had characters who are outsiders Because of the wide range of themes Britten chose for his operas, the music also varies widely in character. “Other opera composers like Puccini and Verdi have a distinct, recognisable sound, but none of Britten’s operas really sound the same,” Mantle says. “Each of the three we are doing has a distinct musical character. In Peter Grimes, which is set in a fishing village, the sea lives in the opera and is absolutely in the music. But A Midsummer Night’s Dream is all about fairies, spells and magic, and the music is very different – with a translucent, magical quality.

It doesn’t sound like the same composer.” Peter Grimes, considered by many to be Britten’s magnum opus, is based on a poem by George Crabbe about a fisherman who becomes vilified by the local community after the death of one of his apprentices. The opera is set in a fictional village that bears a striking resemblance to Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where Britten grew up and where a popular annual music festival is still held in his name. As with many of Britten’s operas, the central character is an outsider who has been marginalised by society. Britten was something of an outsider himself: he was a conscientious objector and also maintained a homosexual relationship – with his great friend and musical collaborator, the tenor Peter Pears – at a time when homosexuality was still illegal. “Britten was a non-conformist,” says Mantle. “His operas nearly all have a central character who is misunderstood or an outsider. Peter Grimes is about a misunderstood individual on the edge of a community; in Death in Venice, Aschenbach goes to Venice alone and has a very strange time.

Britten was not a loner – he had many good friends and was a great collaborator – but he could be quite difficult with his friends sometimes.” One aspect of Britten’s character that has come under close scrutiny in recent years is his relationship with young boys. John Bridcut’s 2006 book Britten’s Children rocked the musical world with its allegations that the composer had relationships with several adolescent boys. Should we be questioning whether it is appropriate to celebrate a man whose past is shrouded in such controversy, particularly in light of the recent Jimmy Savile revelations? Mantle doesn’t think so. “I don’t think we need to talk about his relationship with boys,” he says. “Britten enjoyed young people’s company. There are many pictures that prove that; he believed in young people. But there is no evidence of any impropriety on his part.” Mantle admits that, to the uneducated listener, Britten might not be the most instantly accessible composer. “There’s a bit of a Marmite thing with Britten,” he says. “A lot of people think Britten is not for them, but when they engage with the music they find it can be an incredible experience, especially in the theatrical works.

His music brings the drama alive in a way that most other composers can’t even come close to.” He has high hopes that the opera revolution started by Britten will continue well into the future. “Opera has an awful lot to say and many operas offer very relevant critiques of the times they were written in,” he says. “Britten’s operas in particular are all about either issues or places we can all relate to. Opera is a powerful way to tell fantastic stories and the music is a vehicle for accessing the narrative. It is a very powerful and transforming medium.” Share this post Britten's comic hero Albert Herring: the only virgin in the village | Music | The Guardian Opera Britten's comic hero Albert Herring: the only virgin in the village How many operas feature a man who is crowned May Queen because no one can vouch for the virginity of the village girls? Andrew Mellor on Britten's comic gem, Albert Herring A shy boy about to break free ... Iain Paton in Opera North's 2002 production of Albert Herring.

Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian Andrew Mellor Share on Messenger Close One June night in 1947, an audience at Glyndebourne settled into its seats for the premiere of Benjamin Britten's new comic opera Albert Herring . Two years earlier, the composer had stepped into the operatic limelight with his grand and unsettling tragedy Peter Grimes. Albert Herring retained Grimes's Suffolk setting, but otherwise appeared completely different: a smallscale, genteel comedy reflecting the delightful idiosyncrasies of English village life. The audience chuckled its self-regarding approval, and Albert Herring was promptly filed under "inoffensive comic romp". Give or take the odd attack on its musical validity, it has remained there ever since. But that might be about to change, as Opera North prepares to unveil its new production of the work in Leeds next week. And if any of Britten's major operatic works deserves wholesale reappraisal in the composer's centenary year, it's surely this one.

Behind the opera's jolly japes and canny pastiches is one of Britten's boldest, most socially revolutionary statements: a piece hardwired into the youthful urge to experiment, rebel and break free. When I first heard Albert Herring as a teenager in the 1990s, against a backdrop of grunge and the cult coming-of-age TV drama My So-Called Life , it hit me like a freight train. Here was an opera that didn't feel anything like one: nobody dies; nobody dresses up as a member of the opposite sex; nobody so much as hides in a wardrobe. Instead, a confused and shy young man is crowned Queen of the May because no one can vouch for the virginity of any of the village girls. He spends his prize money on a night of alcohol-fuelled debauchery, probably losing said virginity in the process. Five years earlier, Britten had abandoned a life in the US and returned to his native East Anglia. But as much as he felt rooted in Suffolk, Peter Grimes and Albert Herring represented fierce attacks on the small-town England of the mid-20th century.

The composer's most recent biographer, Paul Kildea , writes of Britten "dealing with the suffocating awfulness of the British class system" when he started work on this new comedy. It's precisely this which Britten depicts in Loxford, the fictional Suffolk town where, circa 1910, Albert works in his mother's shop. Albert is a nerd, a loner, a victim of parental and societal repression. Physically strong, he is assumed by all around him to be mentally weak. Loxford festers under the feudal control of Lady Billows, an aristocrat with a Thatcherite flair for ensuring the village seniors bow to her rampant conservatism. Albert is friendless but for the butcher Sid, who enjoys premarital, alfresco sex with his savvy girlfriend Nancy and urges Albert to break free from his mother's control. At the May celebratory dinner, Sid spikes Albert's lemonade with rum. Albert takes his chance – coerced into action by an acerbic parody of his own coronation music punched out by Britten's angry little orchestra. He escapes with his prize money, binge-drinks and starts a fight in a pub.

There's the sure implication, in Eric Crozier's libretto, that Albert has a sexual encounter – possibly one he pays for. Some, including Kildea, point to a suggestion in the text that it might be with a man. Alexander Sprague will take the title role in Opera North's new production. "It's not so much the way Albert experiences the world when he has this night out – it's more what he realises he can do," the tenor says. "Britten is having a dig at the way children are brought up, the way people are squashed so their true personalities can't surface. It's a kind of 'up yours' to certain people. It must be a reflection of how he was treated by society in his lifetime." Reading this on mobile? Click here to view Opera North's website touts Albert Herring as "endearing, light-hearted and funny". True enough. But Giles Havergal , the director, sees more in it. "Britten was writing about the world he confronted in 1947, particularly the class and generational conflict. We associate the breaking out of youth with the 50s and Look Back in Anger , but it was already in the air.

People like Britten knew what was going to happen." Whether audiences receive the piece as a light comedy or a visionary argument for social change, Albert Herring has always proved a hit with ordinary people. (It's the not-so-ordinary people – the self-appointed curators of musical opinion, mostly critics and conductors – who have tended to shout it down for its perceived lack of musical value.) One reason they love it so much is that it contains some of Britten's most moving, honest and staggeringly inventive music. The whole score effectively rests on a giant musical metaphor: Lady Billows and her cronies are always in control of the orchestra, their music taut and clipped, chugging away on the tracks of baroque pastiche, burning itself out in bloated, congesting fugues. Enter Sid and Nancy, and suddenly the music dances: it becomes rhapsodic, it slithers and soars, sweeping the orchestra along with it. It was the summer riots of 2011 that got me searching for my recording of Albert Herring, perhaps because it's the only opera I know that targets the hollow promises of commercial household brands.

As the village flaunts its allegiance to Colman's mustard, Albert sings a fawning paean to Swan Vesta matches. Peter Grimes (Work - Benjamin Britten/Montagu Slater) | Opera Online - The opera lovers web site Description Act 1 Act 2 Act 3 A shockwave. When Benjamin Britten unveiled his Peter Grimes just after World War II, the London public was dumbstruck by this powerful drama, which not only marked the renaissance of English opera but became immediately established itself as a key work of the 20th century, able to hold its own against the great works of Puccini, Strauss and Janacek. Peter Grimes is a drama of fate: after Don Giovanni, Otello or Wozzeck, the composer picks up the theme of the outcast, the cursed hero whose destruction is foretold. Its setting: a news item in a small village in Suffolk, to which Britten’s sea-tinged music, by turns impressionistic and symbolic, lends heartrending accents of realism and truth.

While the classic forms of opera (arias, duets, choruses) are respected, they are integrated into a fluid, continuous orchestral fabric in which moving harmonies describe the power of the sea, a parable for the storms that toss about in our minds. Summary What exactly happened to Peter Grimes’s apprentice, who disappeared under strange circumstances? That is what the residents of this little village in Suffolk are trying to find out. But Grimes’s explanations shed no light on the mystery, and the villagers distrust this surly individual: better for him to do without an apprentice from now on. Full of goodwill towards him, schoolteacher Ellen Orford tries to protect him, but nonetheless recommends that he behave less brutally towards young John, his new apprentice. The uncouth Grimes will hear none of it and treats his new apprentice so harshly that he panics…and falls from a cliff. The entire village is now at his heels, certain of his guilt even before hearing his side of the story. Rumours and gossip get the best of the fisherman, who is able to escape public condemnation and a lynching only by setting off to sea in his boat and scuttling it at sea.

Act 1 Fisherman Peter Grimes has been asked to account for the mysterious disappearance of his apprentice. An accident, surely. But the inquest’s conclusions are uncertain, and Grimes is advised not to take on any more apprentices : from Captain Balstrode to the apothecary Ned Keene, everyone seems to agree. The fisherman would simply like to find the money to be able to wed the gentle Ellen Orford, the schoolteacher who comes to his defence. As a storm rages, Grimes takes refuge in the inn, where the village is gathered. But his marginal character and his ambiguities alienate the others, and when Ellen comes in, with John, a new apprentice, Grimes forcefully drags the boy off with him into the night. Act 2 As the crowd heads for the church, Ellen notes signs of bruising on John’s body. She questions the lad without getting a response, then questions Peter Grimes, fearing the worst. When Ellen suggests that the fisherman treat his apprentice carefully and allow him some rest, Peter refuses to hear of it and even threatens Ellen.

Excerpt: « The unrelenting work » The exchange between Grimes and Ellen is observed and then reported by several women : the villagers seize on the gossip, and rumours fly. Boles works up the men against Grimes, and the crowd, about to unleash itself, heads for his hut, chanting that they must act before any new tragedy occurs. Ellen, Auntie and her nieces remain alone. Beside himself and gripped by panic, Grimes is persuaded that the boy has reported him when the villagers approach his home. He crudely orders the boy to get on board with him, but when he comes outside, the boy slips and falls from the cliff, screaming. By the time the villagers arrive, it is too late: Grimes has disappeared. Act 3 In the village, everyone is convinced that Grimes (once again!) has murdered his apprentice. As Ellen and some others set off to look for him, wanting to come to his aid, others begin a man-hunt. The sounds of the collective hysteria reach the fisherman’s ears. His only way out, according to Balstrode, is to set off fishing and never return. Grimes obeys, sets off in his boat, and sinks himself at sea.

When the sun rises the following day, there is only a report that a boat sank during the night. Curtain. Benjamin Britten - Peter Grimes - Opera The Borough, a fishing village, East Coast of Anglia, towards 1830 Synopsis At an inquest into the death of William Spode, apprentice to the fisherman Peter Grimes, coroner Swallow calls various witnesses, including Grimes himself, but the verdict of death in accidental circumstances does not satisfy the bulk of the villagers, who regard Grimes as a violent criminal. Their attitude becomes one of open antagonism when his only friend, the schoolmistress Ellen Orford, collects another apprentice from the workhouse for him. In the pub that evening Grimes claims his new boy, to a reception from his fellow townsfolk that is openly and almost universally hostile. Ellen befriends the new boy, John, but is horrified to find evidence on his body of mistreatment. Challenging Peter with this, she is struck in her turn, and while the pub landlady Auntie and her dubious nieces find some sympathy for her the men of the village march in deputation to Grimes's hut to tackle him.

They find it empty — minutes before the new apprentice had fallen to his death over the cliff edge and Peter had climbed down after him. Grimes now disappears, and the local gossip Mrs Sedley stirs the village worthies once more into action, this time with the entire Borough (minus Ellen and the retired sea captain Balstrode) forming a manhunt. While they chase after him, Grimes, completely unhinged by his experiences, turns up on the shore, to be sent by Balstrode to sink himself and his boat at sea. As the village returns to life the following morning, a report of a ship going down is dismissed as a rumour. Repertoire Note In 1942, Britten, then living in America, came across an article by the novelist E.M.Forster on the Suffolk poet George Crabbe, an encounter that was a decisive factor in Britten’s resolve to return to England for good. It was Crabbe’s poem ‘The Borough’ which subsequently served as the basis for Britten’s first full-scale opera, Peter Grimes, the work that launched him internationally as the leading British composer of his generation and which almost single-handedly effected the renaissance of English opera.

The composer’s self-avowed aim in the opera was ‘to express my awareness of the perpetual struggle of men and women whose livelihood depends on the sea’ and anyone who has visited the coastline around the composer’s home town of Aldeburgh will recognize the uncanny certainty with which Britten has captured that land- and seascape in Peter Grimes. Perhaps more importantly, the opera also introduces many of the fundamental dramatic themes which characterise Britten’s entire operatic output: the individual against the mass, and the corruption of innocence. Reproduced by kind permission of the Britten-Pears Library Moods Music Review: Benjamin Britten's 'Peter Grimes' at Washington National Opera Music Review: Benjamin Britten's 'Peter Grimes' at Washington National Opera PHOTOS The ensemble singing in the Washington National Opera's production of Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes," at left in rehearsal, was muddy on opening night, partly owing to a heavy hand by conductor Ilan Volkov. (By Karin Cooper) Patricia Racette, as Ellen Orford.

TOOLBOX Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 23, 2009 "Peter Grimes," Benjamin Britten's 1945 opera, is a dark story about society against the individual. In the Washington National Opera's strong and beautifully cast production, which opened Saturday night at the Kennedy Center, the individuals were very good. When they banded together, things were sometimes problematic -- musically, as well as for the outcast antihero whom they hunt into madness. Paul Curran's subdued production, set in roughly the era when the opera was written, captures the muted palette of an English fishing village without lapsing into the grim inkiness of John Doyle's recent Metropolitan Opera staging. Geometric pentagons of houses -- squares topped with triangles, as a child might draw them -- turned unseeing facades on the village's public spaces, sometimes opening doors to emit crowds of villagers who band into a judgmental unit against any perception of otherness. (Curran underlined this theme at the end of the Prologue, set in a courtroom, when the charwomen bristled with passive aggression at Ellen Orford, the widowed schoolteacher who struggles to reform Grimes.) Then there were the singers.

As Grimes, Christopher Ventris had the rugged good looks to make Ellen's attraction plausible, and a rugged voice blended with fine musicianship that carved poetic lines of silver into the stone of this obdurate role, though he sometimes pushed his voice too hard in the attempt to sing out over conductor Ilan Volkov's unchecked orchestra. Patricia Racette, a luminous singer, mostly shone as Ellen, though her top notes were a little strident -- again in part because of the heavy hand in the pit. Ellen is a difficult role: the character can seem credulous, naive, ineffective, as she sets out to help Grimes without seeming to have any idea of how to go about it beyond being supportive of his new apprentice. Racette's finest moments came when her character set her chin and stood up to the villagers, particularly in Act 1 ("Let her among you without fault cast the first stone!"). At such times she conveyed both vulnerability and courage. The third principal is Captain Balstrode, who maintains his own wind-torn strength, like a pillar of weathered rock amid the waves of the villagers -- easy to do if you wield the natural strength of a voice like Alan Held's.

Held also managed to capture the captain's crustiness without lapsing into old-salt cliche. The only significant flaw in a powerful evening lay with the conductor. Volkov drew many colors and beauties out of the score, but didn't always distinguish between them or provide the emphasis that would have brought out the music's strong through line. As a result, the big ensembles so central to this opera sometimes grew muddy. The first village scene, in which sunlight sparkles (audibly) on the water while the villagers shoot out glints of phrases at each other -- "Good morning!" "Good morning!" -- felt flat. The good news is that such problems are fixable, and may be largely resolved with greater familiarity (there are five more performances through April 4). Volkov certainly did a better job in the third act. One trick of staging "Grimes" lies in drawing the various characters with a sure enough hand that the audience can get a feel for who they are, yet making it believable that they can get swept up into the crowd mentality. It helps to have such strong singers as WNO marshaled.

Keith Phares sang with a marvelous frank lyricism as Ned Keene, the decent but weak apothecary who lines up Grimes's new apprentice. Myrna Paris invested the busybody Mrs. Sedley with a stentorian contralto and the right kind of sententious hysteria as she pops laudanum pills and follows Grimes's purported crimes like a demonic Miss Marple. Mr. Swallow, whose language and music denote a pompous, potbellied lawyer, was surprisingly cast with Daniel Okulitch, the handsome young baritone whose widest recognition may be for his nude scene in the title role of Howard Shore's otherwise forgettable opera "The Fly," and who sang well in this unlikely role. As Auntie, the town publican and madam, Ann McMahon Quintero made less of an impression than she might have. Two sopranos from the company's young-artist program, Emily Albrink and Micaëla Oeste, were well used as Auntie's "nieces." Beyond Curran's sometimes distracting stage business for them, their only weakness lay in representing, through no fault of their own, a pair of disproportionately classy village prostitutes.

All these figures ultimately join forces against Grimes, incited by the penetrating voice of Bob Boles (David Cangelosi), the hypocritical Methodist minister, and supported by the beating of the carter Hobson's drum. Unfortunately, Curran's deployment of the mob wasn't always successful. Conceiving of the work as a single dramatic gesture, he left the curtain up through all the orchestral interludes that delineate the spaces between each scene. While it kept the evening from feeling choppy, this approach sometimes made for awkward mass entrances and exits, as when the chorus poured in to fill the empty village pub in the climactic storm scene that ends Act 1. Still, clumsy as it was, the chorus's fierce cry of "Peter Grimes! Peter Grimes!" in Act 3 was startling enough to cause chills in a listener. And while librettist Montagu Slater's opaque prose sometimes obscures the sense of what's actually going on, the tragedy's main action remained clear: that the mob precipitates exactly the event -- the death of the second apprentice -- that it is purportedly trying to avoid. Then, sated, it closes over Grimes's head.

Curran had the villagers sway gently, like the ocean swell, in the final scene as the town resumes its daily business, less uncaring than impervious. Another group represented on Saturday were subscribers to the now-defunct Baltimore Opera, more than 800 of whom were given free tickets to "Peter Grimes" in a gesture of solidarity from WNO. The evening was certainly a convincing demonstration that opera in this region can still be vital. © 2009 The Washington Post Company Review: Benjamin Britten triumphs in San Francisco - LA Times Benjamin Britten triumphs in San Francisco San Francisco Symphony Stefan Cohen / SF Symphony The San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas perform Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes." The San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas perform Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes." (Stefan Cohen / SF Symphony) Benjamin Britten enjoys a glorious celebration in San Francisco When Peter Grimes "is at his exercise," boys die. The title character of Benjamin Britten's first and best-known opera is a social outcast in a claustrophobic fishing village on the raw British coast. A violent visionary, Grimes is abusive toward his young assistants, his actions tell us.

He is not a bad man, Britten's remarkable music tells us. The questions "Peter Grimes" poses are sizable. At what point does society turn an individual into a psychopath? At what point does empathy become iniquitous? Operatic calculus cannot, perhaps, solve these most complex of moral equations, but it can help. Over the weekend, the San Francisco Symphony ended a three-week Britten Centennial Celebration with a magnificently mortifying semi-staged "Grimes," conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, alongside a bewitching suite from Britten's Balinese ballet, "Prince of the Pagodas." The conditions inside and out of Davies Symphony Hall, as well as the performances, were extraordinary. "Grimes" had its origins in Southern California when the British composer and tenor Peter Pears were waiting out World War II in Escondido. Britten's social alienation was at its peak. He was not yet a national figure in England. He was a pacifist who fled his homeland rather than fight or face arrest. He was gay during intolerant times. Pacifist Benjamin Britten's 'War Requiem' resounded in a time of conflict.

The piece will be conducted by James Conlon in Costa Mesa and Disney Hall. (Richard S. Ginell) He felt an outsider on all fronts. Yet with "Grimes," which fostered a renaissance of British opera, Britten became the ultimate insider composer in Britain. Plus, the enormous success of the opera allowed him to further explore in his celebrated body of work essential social, sexual and controversially left wing themes that had not before been the purview of mainstream classical music. For its semi-staging, the San Francisco Symphony created its own effectively claustrophobic space by surrounding the stage with two rough-edged cycloramas behind the orchestra. Misty images of the waves, the sky and the village were projected on them. The chorus sat in between them. Being in the audience felt like sitting inside a ship, looking out at the dreary coast. James Darrah, the director and costume designer, offered a sea of gloomy grays and rough-hewn villagers to complete the picture. Photos Los Angeles Times photographers document the year in arts and culture. There was talk that the screens affected the acoustics, although that doesn't seem physically very likely, since they weren't exactly acoustical panels.

The fact that the orchestra had an unusually thick, bass-rich, dark sound was, I suspect, mainly the work of Tilson Thomas. Psychoacoustics may have played a role. But the immediacy of the orchestra added genuine profundity to Australian tenor Stuart Skelton's already exceptional Grimes. He was Grimes as a seer, controlled by forces not easily understood. The set, the townsfolk and the chorus closed in on him. The orchestral sound was huge. Instrumental textures were convoluted, with the brass, in particular, demanding to be obeyed. Rather than a sadist, Skelton's compellingly demented Grimes, in this setting, was a victim of larger forces. Normally we empathize with Grimes, seeing him reflected through Ellen Orford. She is one villager on his side and was forcefully sung by Elza van den Heever. But Britten's is primarily an ecological opera. Inhospitable weather and terrain produce the need for social unity and thus conformity. An outsider cannot survive. The set, the excellent direction, a tight and theatrical cast and evocative projections all made that devastatingly visceral. The context of the weekend added more.

San Francisco happened to be in both celebration and commemoration mode. Another centenary was being acknowledged — the start of World War I. (Texts by World War I poet Wilfred Owen formed the basis for Britten's pacifist masterpiece, "War Requiem .") Plus it was gay pride weekend. It was as if Britten's battles had been won. Peace and tolerance were in vivid evidence at Civic Center, across the street from Davies Hall. Street-partying throngs wore colorful thongs. Peace symbols were everywhere. Even the sun was shining (not a predictable San Francisco treat). If "Grimes" was a somber reminder of less hospitable times and climes, "Prince of the Pagodas," the inexplicably neglected ballet with its Tchaikovskian instrumental sugar plums and its wondrous Balinese gamelan imitations, was the perfect Britten romp for the weekend. The program book reproduced a photo of Britten and Pears in wonderfully camp native dress on a trip to Indonesia. But a 44-minute suite removes far too much of this marvelous score. Every instant of the two-hour ballet has something of delight in it.

"Pagodas" was not for Britten superficial escapism but rather a farsighted experiment in musical equanimity by finding an arresting common ground between East and West, between Modernism and Romanticism. It was not, however, an altogether innocent soundtrack for a modern San Francisco where celebrants and Silicon Valley denizens step over the homeless, where social equality has yet to restore economic inequality. Britten insisted on all of it. That insistence also made a special performance of the "Four Sea Interludes" from "Grimes" that preceded the "Pagodas" suite Saturday regrettable. The interludes were accompanied by a video commissioned from Tal Rosner by four orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic . Rosner synchronized antiseptic shots of bridges and rivers, along with the abstract designs, to Britten's score. Nothing was accomplished in the process. But much was accomplished by the vehement magical realism of Tilson Thomas' conducting. It turns out that he will bring the "Four Sea Interludes" to Walt Disney Concert Hall next season with the touring London Symphony Orchestra. Not to worry, the L.A. Phil has yet to program the video.

Question: Opera. Which Benjamin Britten opera is set in a fictional fishing village?
Answer: PETER GRIMES