There’s an extra element to the frightening malevolence of the chorus in this Peter Grimes revival at English National Opera – defiant rage. Each member of the company has suffered huge uncertainty since Arts Council England announced its funding would cease unless ENO moved out of London. A great deal of calm negotiation has since seen that threat recede and money start to flow again, yet not long ago it looked possible that this new 2023–24 season might never materialise. But with a walloping great bang, last night ENO announced it was most definitely back in business.
Yes, with one exception it’s a season of revivals, but that’s no bad thing. It’s good to remind the public and those who pull the purse strings just what strengths lie in the company’s large repertoire, and you couldn’t pick a better company piece than Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. David Alden’s masterly production provides just the right showcase for the wealth of talent that exists at the Coliseum and a completely compelling argument for ENO’s continued existence.
And it takes us back to the origins of the company. Sadler’s Wells Opera – which became ENO – gave the first performance of the work in 1945, and it is into this period that Alden takes us, a time as buttoned-up and repressed as costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s sensible tweeds and cumbersome overcoats. The claustrophobic, close-knit fishing community depicted in George Crabbe’s original poem is fearful, judgemental, deeply hypocritical and resentful of others – particularly towards those who don’t fit in. Not unlike post-Brexit Britain today.
Fisherman Peter Grimes has none of the skills necessary to negotiate his way through the thick nets of social convention that hang in his path every day. Ironically, he’s a fish out of water, a loner, a dreamer, one who thinks that only by making money will he be able to escape the gossip that torments him. But that gossip has grounds to exist: he is cruel towards the orphan boy apprentices he employs in his frenzy to land his catches, and one of them has died on board his boat.
A verdict of accidental death does nothing to stop the tongues wagging and a relentless round of finger-pointing, chin-jutting accusation ensues, depicted with virtuosic venom (and that defiant rage) by the 64 members of ENO’s magnificent chorus, with powerful momentum from movement director Maxime Braham.
Tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones excelled as Grimes. He’s a shambling mountain of a man, so unkempt and unwashed you can almost smell the fish on him. He sang with a pained beauty throughout, a man tortured by the knowledge that he will never achieve his ambitions. He found just the right level of ambiguity that Britten intended. Is he a monster or a misfit? We swung constantly between disgust and sympathy, right to the final curtain.
The only person who sees the possibility of redemption in Grimes is the widowed schoolteacher Ellen Orford, sung with warm compassion by Elizabeth Llewellyn. She risks alienation from the community by trying, and failing, to support him and bring comfort to his silent, terrified new apprentice boy John (William Biletsky). Tragically, Grimes dreams that one day they will be married.
A roster of fine ENO stalwarts filled some of the lesser roles: bass Clive Bayley was outstanding as Swallow, the coroner; baritone Alex Otterburn sashayed around the stage as the spivvy fixer Ned Keene; bass baritone Simon Bailey was outwardly bluff but inwardly subtly sympathetic as Captain Balstrode, and bass David Soar commanded the stage as the carrier Hobson, who relishes his role as drummer when the village elders go to confront Grimes.
Soprano Christine Rice made a distinctive landlady of The Boar inn, in her manly pin-striped suit, but her nieces (sopranos Cleo Lee-McGowan and Ava Dodd) struck a worryingly creepy note, dressed as robotic, identical twin schoolgirls, the unsettling objects of lust among the hypocritically upright senior menfolk.
Swirling through all this like a riptide is Britten’s brilliant score, punctuated with the four Sea Interludes, those ravishing depictions of the ocean in all its states. Martyn Brabbins steered the splendid ENO Orchestra through these thrillingly dangerous waters with a firm hand on the tiller, the players responding magnificently. And as a confirmation that this was truly a company production, the entire orchestra joined the cast on stage to take the applause at the close. We are ENO, they seemed to say. Challenge us at your peril.
