Intense and moving Peter Grimes in Oldenburg – Seen and Heard International seenandheard-international.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from seenandheard-international.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Let me begin – most unusually – with the orchestra. The ENO's production of Peter Grimes (they're still, thankfully, at the Coliseum – despite the best efforts of the Arts Council) is remarkable in many ways, but the orchestra under Martyn Brabbins is quite outstanding. Their ability to draw the rapturous and rhapsodic from Benjamin Britten's score was met with deservedly tumultuous applause. Rapturous? Rhapsodic? This is Peter Grimes we're talking about here, an opera famed for its grimness and desolation. The music itself, though, rolls in great glorious waves, the personification of the unseen character at the centre of the plot – the sea itself. Peter Grimes is a fisherman whose apprentice has died at sea. The village seeks to condemn Peter Grimes for some unknown crime against the boy but it is decided the death was an accident. Nevertheless, Grimes is still the outsider, untrusted and in some way different. Many have seen reflections in this of Britten