After 10 years, Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes finally returned to the Metropolitan Opera stage last Thursday, in a new production by John Doyle. The opera, widely considered to be Britten’s best, tells the story of Peter Grimes, a socially estranged fisherman who, facing a hostile, vengeful mob furious over the deaths of two of his apprentices, kills himself.
The fact that it took this long for Peter Grimes to return to the Met is yet another manifestation of the deeply entrenched ultra-conservatism that has defined the opera house’s history. Britten himself is decidedly conservative as modernists go, deeply steeped in the Anglican choral tradition that he shared with Herbert Howells, Charles VilliersStanford, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and other more conventional early 20th century English composers. Doyle’s Peter Grimes, however, is a progressive breath of fresh air amongst the stagnant, uninspiring Zeffirelli productions that the Met dusts off and try to pass off year after year.
It is too soon to tell whether new general manager Peter Gelb’s enthusiasm for new productions will succeed in contesting Zeffirelli’s dominance of the Met stage, though things seem to be moving in the right direction. Last season featured several successful new productions—most notably Anthony Minghella’s Madama Butterfly—and Doyle’s Peter Grimes is one of seven new productions slated for this season.
Musically, the new production is outstanding. The orchestra, under the command of Donald Runnicles, performs Britten’s score with intention and gusto. The well-known “Sea Interludes,” which provide a running musical counterpoint and commentary to the dramatic action throughout the opera (a sort of musical Greek chorus), are particularly moving. They also provide a nice counterbalance to the chorus, which plays a quite prominent and active role in the plot of the opera. Chorus Master Donald Palumbo’s troops sing with commanding and oppressive intensity.
The main characters are top-rate. Anthony Dean Griffey brings a tender, brilliant tone that often explodes with passion to the eponymous character. Grimes’ only advocates in the town, schoolmistress Ellen Orford and retired merchant Captain Balstrode, are also vocally strong, as are many of the secondary characters.
Dramatically, the new production is more challenging. Doyle writes in his notes that he intends to evoke the claustrophobic feel of Britain’s small fishing communities. This intention is undeniably evident, pervading and unifying every detail of the sets and staging.
The opera opens with a massive tar-painted wooden wall situated extremely close to the edge of the stage. Over the course of the opera, this wall expands, breaks in half, and moves upstage and down, depicting different locales within the town united by the ubiquitous drab black presence.
The staging is similarly restrained, minimalist, and alienating. The chorus—dressed all in black—is hardly organic, but often organized as a phalanx. The massive black wall contains five levels of windows and doors—opening and closing portals from which various townspeople sing, detached, as if from on high, over the course of the opera. At times this device verges on the comical, recalling an Advent calendar.
The Advent calendar does not seem to be Doyle’s inspiration, but it is quite useful in understanding this production. Both Curlew River and the Rape of Lucretia, two other Britten operas, are tragedies that end with anachronistic—and quite unconvincing—tacked-on codas promising Christian redemption. Peter Grimes, although actually set in Christian times as the church scene reminds us, offers no such consolation. Grimes’ quest for acceptance—“What harbor shelters peace, / away from tidal waves, / away from storms?” is his repeated refrain—is flatly denied by the Christian community. The last time he poses this question, with the angry mob screaming his name in the distance, Captain Balstrode, singing from one of the lower advent portals, advises Grimes to sail out to sea and sink his boat. Ellen—appearing from the opposite portal, wearing a blue dress and red shawl—the colors of the Virgin Mary—protests, but her simple “No!” is hardly the harbor that Grimes seeks.
Grimes thus leaves to sink himself before the final scene, in which the black advent wall, for the first time, recedes entirely to the wings, revealing the chorus, and a bright, simple white landscape with a several-leveled staircase structure with mannequins on it in the background (this last touch is baffling). There is no promise of redemption, but rather only an ominous quatrain from the chorus: “In ceaseless motion comes and goes the tide, / flowing it fills the channel broad and wide. / Then back to sea with strong majestic sweep / it rolls in ebb yet terrible and deep.” All is calm for now in Grimes’ village, until the townspeople pick their next victim.