Tuesday 30 May 2017

Concert performance of Benjamin Britten's opera.

The opera contains powerful and evocative music, and paints a vivid picture of a society characterized by suspicion, gossip and bullying when tragedy strikes.

Peter Grimes is inspired by Georg Crabbe's poetry collection The Borough from 1810. Britten and his partner Peter Pears edited the texts. We are talking about typical themes for Britten; a sympathetic portrait of the social outcast, undertones of sexual ambiguity and abuse, as well as an intolerant and hypocritical society looking for scapegoats.

The story is about Peter Grimes, a fisherman living in a small coastal village on the east coast of England. He is summoned to court after his young apprentice dies at sea.

The locals are convinced that Grimes is to blame for the death, but he goes free with an order not to use apprentices. Grimes does not heed the court's warning and soon gets hold of a new boy at the poorhouse. Sometime later this boy also dies.

The villagers gather to take Grimes, who goes mad, and the old ship captain Balstrode tells him to go to sea to drown himself.