Opera Review: Britten's Peter Grimes and Britten's Death in Venice
ON A SHINGLE shore with a choppy grey sea as backdrop, Peter Grimes came home to its birthplace in one of the most exhilarating opera events I have experienced, and also the chilliest. Benjamin Britten’s opera, based on George Crabbe’s poem The Borough, is set in the Suffolk fishing town of Aldeburgh, which hosts a renowned annual festival.
This year’s Aldeburgh Festival, celebrating the centenary of Britten’s birth, took the bold step of producing the opera on the shingle beach from which Grimes would have set off to fish. Concessions were made by pre-recording the Britten-Pears Orchestra under conductor Steuart Bedford at Snape Concert Hall, so that rain wouldn’t damage the musical instruments.
There were no concessions to the singers’ larynxes, however, apart from discreet amplification for the soloists. Bravest of all were brothel keeper Auntie’s “nieces” (Alexandra Hutton and Charmian Bedford) perched on a lookout platform with a stiff North Easterly breeze buffeting their flimsy frocks.
The set by Leslie Travers, sited on the water’s edge, consists of two twisted board walks, and several dilapidated fishing boats, which serve as courtroom, pub, or town square.
Throughout the evening the sky, weather and sea played a part in what was, if not the most audibly perfect production, certainly the most atmospheric.
Director Tim Albery sets the opera around the time when Britten wrote it, emphasised by the 1944 Spitfire fighter plane that flew over just before the opera began and performed a perfect loop.
Tenor Alan Oke inhabits the role of Grimes so completely that you empathise with the awkward outsider who has roused the townspeople’s suspicions after the death of his first apprentice at sea.
His relationship with the school teacher Ellen Orford, beautifully sung by Giselle Allen, ends in violence when she tries to protect the new apprentice from being overworked.
Throughout this drama of a man at odds with himself and society, are woven the everyday lives of the townspeople, with Gaynor Keeble’s rich-voiced Auntie trying to keep Robert Murray’s drunken Bob Boles in check, and Charles Rice’s dodgy chemist Ned Keene peddling laudanum to an ever less genteel Mrs Sedley (Catherine Wyn-Rogers). At the end, with the second apprentice accidentally killed, and the Borough baying for blood, Grimes can only follow the advice of David Kempster’s Captain Balstrode, to take to the sea and sink his boat. In an eerie final scene, the boat is pushed over the shingle towards the darkened water.
Throughout the evening the sky, weather and sea played a part in what was, if not the most audibly perfect production, certainly the most atmospheric.
The film Peter Grimes On Aldeburgh Beach will be released in UK cinemas in September. There is also a CD of the live recording at Snape Concert Hall by Aldeburgh Music (aldeburgh.co.uk).
Deborah Warner’s ravishing 2007 production of Death In Venice returns with John Graham-Hall as blocked middle-aged novelist Aschenbach. The opera’s bleak vision is a reminder that it was written while Britten was dying of a heart condition. The story, from Thomas Mann’s haunting novella, concerns a high-minded writer’s obsession with a beautiful Polish boy he sees cavorting on the beach.
Graham-Hall brings out the anger and self-disgust of Aschenbach, and Sam Zaldivar as Tadzio is an eye-catching dancer-gymnast. The ebullient Andrew Shore takes on seven roles, including that of elderly fop, hotel manager, and leader of a comedy troupe.
Tom Pye’s sets and Jean Kalman’s masterly lighting evoke the luminescence of sky and water. There are moments of longueur in the balletic scenes, but this is an exquisite staging of Britten’s unsettling final work.
To be broadcast live on Sky Arts 2 HD tomorrow from 8pm
Britten’s Peter Grimes
Aldeburgh Beach, Suffolk
(Run ended)
Verdict: 5/5
Britten’s Death in Venice
English National Opera
The Coliseum, London WC2
(Tickets: 020 7845 9300; £16-£99)
Verdict: 4/5
