Peter Grimes, Welsh National Opera, review: A magnificent show delivered in difficult circumstances
A massive night for Welsh National Opera, still in the turmoil of financial crisis, as it unveiled its first new production under the new executive team of Sarah Crabtree and Adele Thomas. The audience included Sir Nicholas Serota, Chairman of Arts Council England (one of the creators of its financial woes), Welsh advocate Sir Bryn Terfel, and at least one previous WNO head, Sir David Pountney, who had previously called for Serota's resignation.
Turbulence in the background, then, and plenty of turbulence onstage in Britten's compellingly relevant drama: as the years go by, Peter Grimes (based on a libretto by Montagu Slater after a story by Crabbe) seems ever more potent. This story of a loner fisherman on the Suffolk coast, responsible for the death of one young apprentice and then for another, can be read in so many ways. Is Grimes the innocent, hounded by the malevolent eccentrics of the Borough or a spiritual figure set against a sullen local crowd? We have been given both in fine recent stagings.
Britten's music is rooted in the sea and its impact; oddly, you feel it lurks off-centre in the background of Melly Still's production, made explicit only by the ropes and nets and looming overhanging boat that form Chiara Stephenson's economy set. There is far too much fussy quasi-choreographic action in the sea interludes that are such a central part of Britten's score, and much playing around with door frames as entrances and exits. The teasing, teenage activities of a boyish quartet of dancers (Dance Ensemble Dawns) reflect the story back on Britten's personal story of interaction with young boys rather than on the opera's narrative.
However, there are some original insights: Grimes's second apprentice John is a tall and lanky teenager (played, like the dancers, by a woman, Maya Marsh), who gives as good as he sets and punches Grimes, immediately regretting it. John falls down the cliff and dies, but as Grimes's mental disintegration then takes over, both John and the first apprentice come back to life, leading the abject fisherman gently back towards the invisible sea that will claim him; a touching moment.
None of this would work without the inspired central portrayal of Grimes himself by Nicky Spence, a burly, wide-eyed innocent who gleams with delight at the prospect of fishing, and whose bursts of violence here are a symptom of pent-up frustration. His voice is clear and serene, and his affection for Ellen Orford naively genuine. Sally Matthews captures Ellen's heartfelt support for him perfectly, though the voice is not as focussed as it ought to be.
The characterisations of the supporting roles, notably Sarah Connolly's glitzy landlady Auntie and Catherine Wyn-Rogers's ever-downward-looking Mrs Sedley, have room to develop, while the nieces of Fflur Wyn and Eiry Price wreak havoc with the weak men of the Borough, Ned Keene (Dominic Sedgwick) and Swallow (Sion Goronwy). At heart Peter Grimes is an ensemble opera, and here the momentum under conductor Tomáš Hanus took a while to get going in act one.
But the singing of the augmented WNO chorus in act three was magnificent, and the orchestra, with a plangent solo viola leading the Passacaglia, was superb. On stage at the end, Crabtree and Thomas made the case for opera, the arts and WNO. Let's hope the right people were listening.
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