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In 1966 the televised version of Britten’s Billy Budd had met with such success that when John Culshaw took up the position of Head of Music at the B.B.C. he wished to produce Peter Grimes with the composer conducting. However, Britten was unhappy with the typical acoustics of a television studio and insisted that the recording should take place in the newly-converted Snape Maltings. This allowed orchestra and singers to be in one area rather than divided between studios. The chosen designer was David Myerscough-Jones who recalled:
“With the challenge of designing Peter Grimes in the somewhat restrictive space of the Maltings, it was necessary to develop a setting that would be adaptable to all the various scenes, taking into account camera positions from all angles. The central ramp was rotational, to be used for the Borough and the man-hunt scenes, with moveable plastic clad flats to provide the necessary scenic elements of the Moot Hall, both interior and exterior, and the Boar Inn … I did not want to use a representational seascape, but rather by employing a series of distant abstract images projected onto gauze, invoking an illusion of cloud and water without the use of realism … We were very conscious of preserving the unique sound of the Maltings, so all the materials used in the construction of the set were of non absorbent substance … there were no curtains or drapes, only black gauze which covered the stark brick walls of the hall. “
Britten was pleased with the proposals and work commenced on the finished designs exhibited here. They have a particularly disquieting resonance which no doubt appealed strongly to the composer, since Myerscough-Jones was not concerned to depict an outwardly charming coastal town with picturesque local characters. His flaring images illustrate not only the primaeval disorder of the sea but also seem to portray Grimes’s hallucinatory nature—‘I have my visions, fiery visions’ Grimes rails at Balstrode—which drives the character to aspirations far above the daily concerns and knowledge of the Borough. Grimes’s visualizations may be considered a personal grey disturbance paralleling his environment, one which colours not only his ambivalent relationship with Ellen but more fundamentally the contrasting forces of yearning for the harbour which ‘can embrace / Terrors and tragedies’ and the all-embracing refuge of the sea itself which will ‘drink my sorrows dry’.
The great success of the 1969 production of Peter Grimes resulted in the artist undertaking the designs for the televised performance by Pears and Britten of Schubert’s Winterreise the following year and the première of Britten’s television opera Owen Wingrave in 1971.
Mixed media on paper: 22.9 x 30.4 cm |
