Peter Grimes review - electrifying performance of visceral power

Conducted by Edward Gardner and directed by Vera Rostin Wexelsen, the Bergen Philharmonic’s semi-staging of Britten’s Peter Grimes was first seen in Norway in the spring of 2017, followed, a few months later, by a performance at the Edinburgh international festival. Revived earlier this year, with some cast changes, it has now reached London, and can only be described as a formidable achievement, at once fiercely intelligent and visceral in its power.

Gardner’s interpretation, already familiar from performances at ENO and the Proms, places the emphasis on the metaphysical links between the arbitrary violence of nature and the abyss of the human soul. The Bergen orchestra’s playing combines richness with precision, and Britten’s seascapes glittered balefully even in moments of uneasy calm. The storm of act one, meanwhile, found its hideous human counterpart in the lynch mob that later bays for Grimes’s blood.

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Wexelsen’s staging wisely concentrates on psychological subtlety rather than directorial glosses. Beer kegs form the minimal set, and the Apprentice’s blood-red jersey, tellingly, is the only splash of colour amid predominant blue and black. Stuart Skelton’s Grimes, visionary, curiously childlike and unaware of his own strength, shrinks from physical contact with Erin Wall’s Ellen, but unthinkingly terrifies his Apprentice. Meanwhile, the omnipresence of the chorus – observers of the drama in which they also participate – lends the work something of the inexorability of classical tragedy.

It was superbly sung. Combining lyricism with vocal weight, Skelton’s well-nigh ideal Grimes has, if anything, gained in subtlety and depth with time: Now the Great Bear and Pleiades was pure poetry, ravishingly done. Wall made a lovely Ellen, vulnerable yet principled. Roderick Williams was the thoughtful, empathetic Balstrode, and the denizens of the Borough, all sharply characterised, included Marcus Farnsworth’s raffish Ned Keene, Susan Bickley’s knowing, world-weary Auntie and Catherine Wyn-Rogers’ hypocritical, drug-ridden Mrs Sedley. The choral singing – from the combined forces of the Bergen Philharmonic and Royal Northern College of Music Opera Choirs, the Edvard Grieg Kor and the Colligeûm Mûsicûm – was electrifying throughout.