Friday 13 March 2026
Lowry, Salford
*****
A viscerally powerful production of Britten’s masterpiece
In his programme note for Opera North’s performance of Peter Grimes at Lowry in Salford on Friday, Andrew Mellor compares the central character in the opera with the Peter Grimes of George Crabbe’s poem The Borough (1810) that provided Benjamin Britten’s inspiration,
[Grimes] appears in just one poem out of Crabbe’s 24. He does so as a scoundrel: a villain unequivocally guilty of murder. As they sketched out their scenario, [Peter] Pears (destined for the title role) and Britten reimagined the character.
Britten, his partner Peter Pears and the librettist Montagu Slater turned Grimes into a morally ambiguous anti-hero, a dreamer and a visionary with a darker, more violent side – like Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In doing so, they raised profound questions about the nature of society and its relationship with outsiders. Phyllida Lloyd’s stunning production takes Britten’s subtle characterisation and adds a further layer of complexity, providing empathy without denying the violent volatility of Grimes’ character: a tragic hero for our troubled times.
In Lloyd’s production, the opera opens in silence with the half-naked figure of Grimes dead on the stage; in the libretto, we learn that Grimes’ boat is ‘sinking at sea’, but we don’t see his body. In the scene in the pub, where Grimes sings his aria ‘Now the Great Bear and Pleiades’, the townspeople gradually rise from the floor and seem briefly to share his vision of the stars beyond our world, before dismissing him as ‘mad. or drunk.’
Later, we see the second Apprentice walking above the stage, before his death, in a ghostly vision, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father on the battlements at Elsinore. Grimes reacts in horror at this premonition of the boy’s death. In a dumb show, we see Grimes and Ellen Orford married (‘I’ll marry Ellen’) and celebrating with the townspeople, illustrating his vision of marital bliss, ‘in dreams I’ve built myself some kindlier home.’ His vision is brutally shattered.
Like many contemporary directors, Lloyd uses the orchestral interludes (four of which Britten later arranged as the orchestral suite Four Sea Interludes) to add further layers to the story. (Britten wrote them to cover scene changes while the curtain was down.) Lloyd uses the fifth interlude at the start of Act III as a threnody for Grimes’ second Apprentice, as Grimes carries the dead boy and holds him aloft in agony. The contrast with the dance music’s frivolity as the townspeople come onstage is heartbreaking.
Friday evening’s performance was a revival by director Karolina Sofulak of Lloyd’s production. The tenor John Findon played the central character in an intensely moving and powerful portrayal. We shared his dreams and recoiled at his violence. He projected his voice superbly, and coped with the high tessitura of the part wth ease. His lower register had a lovely, rich baritonal quality. He was a brooding physical presence, in Britten’s words, a ‘visionary and highly skilled fisherman, [who] is very unpopular with the community, just because he is different.’
Philippa Boyle was a hugely sympathetic Ellen Orford, with a gorgeous, lightly florid soprano voice. The domestic calm of her scene with the Apprentice while the villagers were at church was heartwarming. Her true concern when she discovered that Grimes had bruised the boy was a demonstration of her practical morality, in contrast to the townspeople’s false piety as they sang hymns and intoned prayers in church. Like Grimes, she was an outsider. She was incredibly moving in the scene in which the townspeople confronted her, and she described the shared dream she briefly shared with Grimes of their life together, ‘We planned this time to share…’ Much later, when she found the pullover she had embroidered for the Apprentice, which signified that he was dead, she sang of her ‘dreams of a silk and satin life’ of luxury, contrasting brutally with the reality of the life that Grimes had forced on her.
In 1945, Britten wrote of ‘the perpetual struggle of men and women whose livelihoods are dependent on the sea.’ In the early part of the opera, the townspeople’s struggle to make a living and their genuine fear of the oncoming storm were drawn sympathetically. But they soon displayed the terrifying hypocrisy and brutality of humans united in a group against an outsider. When they formed a lynch mob to flush out Grimes from his hut, one of them carried a cross, giving false religious legitimacy to their mission. There was a terrifying scene when they ripped the head off a life-size effigy of Grimes and waved it triumphantly aloft. They left the stage, revealing the real Grimes as a tragic figure, a sweet violin duet adding to the poignancy. The chorus singing was superb throughout; their spine-chilling cries of ‘Grimes’ will live long in the memory.
The staging was highly imaginative; there were no fixed sets, which allowed the orchestral interludes to be used for dramatic purposes as mentioned above. A huge net represented, at different times, an actual fishing net, the walls of the pub and a physical barrier between the townspeople and Ellen Orford. At the end, the nets swayed gently in silence as normal life returned to the town, a moment of catharsis after the drama and tragedy we had experienced. Simple wooden platforms were used as furniture in Swallow’s court, as a wooden barrier, and as the walls of a dance hall. Grimes’ hut sprang up before our eyes, with a vertiginous drop.
The supporting cast was very strong. Simon Bailey made a robust and sympathetic Captain Balstrode, with superb diction. Claire Pascoe was excellent as the scheming busybody Mrs Sedley. Blaise Malaba, as Hobson, had a lovely, rich voice, similar to Willard White’s. James Creswell was suitably pompous as the lawyer, Swallow. The two Nieces, Nazan Fikret and Ava Dodd, were flirty but steely when rejecting unwanted advances. Hilary Summers was a characterful, down-to-earth Auntie. There was a gorgeous moment when the Nieces, Auntie and Ellen Orford joined in a Mozartian quartet. As conductor Garry Walker wrote in his programme note, the characters are ‘suddenly furnished with great depth by the quality of the music.’ The Orchestra of Opera North was absolutely superb. They played with passion and precision, inexorably ratcheting up the tension in the most dramatic sections, bringing out all the power and relentless rhythmic energy of Britten’s remarkable score.
Performers
John Findon Peter Grimes, a fisherman
Philippa Boyle Ellen Orford, schoolmistress, a widow
Simon Bailey Captain Balstrode, retired merchant skipper
Hilary Summers Auntie, landlady of The Boar
Nazan Fikret First niece, Ava Dodd Second niece: main attractions of The Boar
Stuart Jackson Bob Boles, a fisherman and Methodist
James Creswell Swallow, a lawyer
Claire Pascoe Mrs Sedley, a widow
Daniel Norman Reverend Horace Adams, the rector
Johannes Moore Ned Keene, apothecary and quack
Blaise Malaba Hobson, a carrier
Dean Robinson Dr Crabbe
Toby Dray John, Peter Grimes’s Apprentice
Chorus of Opera North Townspeople and Fishermen
Children of the Borough Maneli Bahmanesh, Ethel Brand, Olivia Dunning, Isaac Falkingham
Charlotte Gould, Charlotte Handforth, Finlay Lothian Holm, Joni McElhatton, Leon Sumi-Cathcar
Garry Walker conductor
Phyllida Lloyd director
Karolina Sofulak revival director
Tim Claydon revival director/movement director
Anthony Ward set and costume designer
Paule Constable original lighting designer
Ben Jacobs lighting designer
Sources
Garry Walker, To Hear and Sea: A Personal Reflection on Peter Grimes (Opera North Programme Notes)
Gavin Plumley The Outsider (Opera North Programme Notes)
Andrew Mellor Peter Grimes An Opera for the English (Opera North Programme Notes)
Peter Grimes will be performed at Newcastle Theatre Royal on Friday 20 March at 19.00
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