12. Peter Grimes. Against the Tide. Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears, both conscientious objectors, were in New York during much of WW2. The combined experience of seeing Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and reading George Crabbe’s narrative poem The Borough (1810), set in Britten’s native East Anglia, convinced the composer that he had to return home to write an opera based on the protagonist of one of its sections, the outcast fisherman Peter Grimes. Grimes in the original is a sadist and murderer, but Britten saw a more complex character, a visionary outsider who refuses to conform to the conventions of small-town society; it was something with which he could strongly identify.

Peter Grimes premiered at Sadlers Well Theatre in London on 7 June, 1945, one month after the cessation of hostilities in Europe. It was hailed as the great new hope of British opera, and is still regarded as a masterpiece today. The portrait gallery of small-town types painted by Britten and his librettist Montagu Slater was very much in the English tradition running from Dickens to Ealing Comedy films. But the authors make it a powerful indictment of social intolerance and mob violence, and Britten flooded it with a musical evocation of the raw power of the sea that he knew, and feared, so well. rb.

The handout includes a list of characters and brief synopsis. There is an excellent 3-minute video synopsis (albeit in relation to a modern production in Poland) online here. A PDF breakdown of the various sections in the scene to be watched in class can be found here; you may care to print it out to bring to class. Other resources will be posted immediately after class.