Britten-Pears Foundation

 
From the La Monnaie production, 2003

from the La Monnaie production, 2003

Peter Grimes

In 1942, Britten, then living in America, came across an article by the novelist E.M.Forster on the Suffolk poet George Crabbe, an encounter that was a decisive factor in Britten’s resolve to return to England for good. It was Crabbe’s poem ‘The Borough’ which subsequently served as the basis for Britten’s first full-scale opera, Peter Grimes, the work that launched him internationally as the leading British composer of his generation and which almost single-handedly effected the renaissance of English opera.

From the Royal Opera House production of Peter Grimes, 2004

From the Royal Opera House, 2004

The composer’s self-avowed aim in the opera was ‘to express my awareness of the perpetual struggle of men and women whose livelihood depends on the sea’ and anyone who has visited the coastline around the composer’s home town of Aldeburgh will recognize the uncanny certainty with which Britten has captured that land- and seascape in Peter Grimes. Perhaps more importantly, the opera also introduces many of the fundamental dramatic themes which characterise Britten’s entire operatic output: the individual against the mass, and the corruption of innocence.

Listen

Audio clips from Britten's own Decca recording with Peter Pears, Claire Watson, Owen Brannigan, and the Choir and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

  1. 1 Act I. Opening of first Sea Interlude
  2. 2 Act II. ‘From the gutter’

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ENO Baylis