Peter Grimes - History

History

In 1941, shortly after the first performance of his opera Paul Bunyan, Britten and his partner Peter Pears went to stay at Escondido, California. There they read the poem by Crabbe and were struck by it. Britten, being a native of Suffolk, strongly identified with the tragic story of the Aldeburgh fisherman Peter Grimes. He later said: "In a flash I realised two things: that I must write an opera, and where I belonged."

Britten returned to England in April, 1942. Soon after his return, he asked Montagu Slater to be his librettist for Peter Grimes. Britten and Pears both had a strong hand in drafting the story, and in this process the character of Grimes became far more complex. Rather than being the clear-cut villain he is in Crabbe's version, he became a victim of both cruel fate and society, while retaining darker aspects in his character. It is left to the audience to decide which version is more true, and to see how clear-cut or ambiguous the various characters are.

Pears was certainly the intended Peter Grimes, and it is likely that Britten wrote the role of Ellen Orford for Joan Cross. The work has been called "a powerful allegory of homosexual oppression", and one of "the true operatic masterpieces of the 20th century," but the composer's own contemporary (1948) summation of the work was simpler:

"a subject very close to my heart—the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual."

Though as the writing of the libretto progressed, certain versions showed Grimes' relations with his apprentice to be bordering on paederastic, Pears persuaded Slater to cut the questionable stanzas from the final version. Many scholars, instead of viewing this as a celebration of Grimes' abuse, look at it as Britten's condemnation of the homophobia of his era, and what he understood to be the destructive sociological consequences of it. The opera was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundations and is "dedicated to the memory of Natalie Koussevitzky", wife of the Russian-born American conductor Sergei Koussevitzky.

When Joan Cross, who was then manager of the Sadler's Wells company, announced her intention to re-open Sadler's Wells theatre with Peter Grimes with herself and Peter Pears in the leading roles, there were many complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the "cacophony" of Britten's score. Yet when Peter Grimes opened in June 1945 the opera was hailed by public and critics; its box-office takings matched or exceeded those for La bohème and Madame Butterfly, which were being staged concurrently by the company.

Its American premiere was given in 1946 at Tanglewood by Koussevitzky's pupil, Leonard Bernstein.

In 1967, the Metropolitan Opera mounted a "landmark" production directed by Tyrone Guthrie and starring Jon Vickers in the role of Grimes.