Page 294 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

292 20TH-CENTURY BRITISH OPERA

The main characters in Peter Grimes

Foes Friends

Mrs. Sedley (mezzo soprano)
Town gossip Ellen Orford (soprano)
A schoolteacher who sees the
good in Grimes and wants to
marry him.
Auntie (contralto)
Landlady of the pub

Swallow (bass)
Lawyer Captain Balstrode
(baritone) Retired sea captain

Bob Boles (tenor)
A fisherman and a Methodist

Peter Grimes Ned Keene
The Townspeople The antihero, he is violent, (baritone) Apothecary
(chorus) solitary, and an outsider.

because of their love for one fisherman, Peter Grimes has just but the relationship is halting.
another—homosexuality being been cleared of the death of an In the prologue’s duet “The truth …
illegal in Britain until 1967. apprentice but is warned not to the pity … and the truth,” Ellen
seek a replacement. Faced with the sings in the bright E major chord
Ovations for a masterpiece townspeople’s hostility, Grimes while Grimes begins in F minor.
The first performance of Britten’s yearns in vain for love and simple Gradually, Grimes gives way to
Peter Grimes took place at the domesticity with his friend Ellen Ellen, and the pair are in unison,
Sadler’s Wells Theatre on June 7, Orford, a widowed schoolmistress, but it does not last.
1945. The composer and conductor In defiance of local opinion,
Imogen Holst, who was later a Grimes procures a new apprentice,
codirector of the Aldeburgh and his fate is sealed. When Ellen
Festival, recalled the thrill of the spots a bruise and accuses him of
occasion: “No one in the audience mistreating the boy, local people
will ever forget the excitement of see Grimes strike her then leave.
that evening,” she wrote. When He wished for one to Forming a lynch mob, they advance
the tragedy had reached its quiet trouble and control; on Grimes’s clifftop hut to a drum
end and the opera was over, she he wanted some obedient beat suggesting impending doom
sensed that the audience knew boy to stand and bear the but find nothing amiss as Grimes
they had been listening to a blow of his outrageous hand. is away fishing. His apprentice,
masterpiece: “They stood up Peter Grimes however, has fallen down the cliff
and shouted and shouted.” to his death. His jersey is later
The popularity of the opera lay found washed ashore, and the mob
partly in its psychological drama advances on the hut once more.
and depth of characterizaton. A Doomed, Grimes rows out to sea
complex, lonely, and tormented and sinks his boat. The opera ends

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