Peter Grimes! Peter Grimes!

Benjamin Britten's masterpiece Peter Grimes is one of the few 20th century pieces that is pretty much universally adored (check out Nico Muhly's rapturous thoughts on the opera as an example), and the Met premiered a highly anticipated new production of the opera on February 28.


The singing was quite good across the board, not normally something I think even about the best Met productions. The diction was just suberb. Anthony Dean Griffey ( who looks in the marketing shots like the love child of Stephin Merrit and Byrn Terfel) did a fine job as the title character in a role that can be tiring, and the women were all excellent - Patricia Racette sang as well as I have ever heard her sing and was a hugely sympathetic Ellen, Jill Grove did a great job as Auntie, and there was a moment in the Third Act where Felicity Palmer nearly stole the show as Mrs. Sedley - in fact I came away from the production thinking someone should write a spin-off of Peter Grimes with that character, written for her. Now, that would be fun.

Of course, the opera itself is not exactly fun. There are light moments, but we are talking about a social misfit who mishandles situations right and left and is a complicated-not-exactly-sympathetic character, but at the same time who is unfairly and cruelly judged and tormented by his peers. This is a far cry from the injustice of La Traviata.

So, the music is great, the singing was great, the conducting was fine (Donald Runnicles brought nothing new to the score but he didn't detract from it either). The production itself isn't quite as easy to rate.

The production, by John Doyle with sets by Scott Pask, is dominated by an oppressive wall which looks like it was made of discarded weathered planks, perhaps remnants of the sea town's buildings and ships. There is enough shape and design in the wall to suggest buildings, and there are doors and windows scattered up the entire heighth of the wall, which practically hits the top of the proscenium. The doors swing open to reveal characters at various points - never Peter Grimes - and at many times, from the opening trial scene on - character are looking down on Peter Grimes as they sing.


This massive wall moves upstage and downstage often, like the waves described at the end of the opera, and is at times so far downstage as to be oppressive. At these times the singers, often large crowds of them, are forced together on the apron of the stage, and the uncomfortable and unnatural closeness of the bodies creates a sense of claustrophobia.

There are also two wing towers which move in at several points to create a semblance of a smaller space - the inside of Grimes' hut for example - and these scenes are every bit as claustrophic as when the great wall is about to push the chorus into the audience. The entire production is oppressive to the characters and the audience. And it's awesome.
During the First Act, I was a bit underwelmed with the production. It wasn't fancy enough for me. I wanted a fishing town, I wanted a good fog, and maybe some sea mist spraying into the audience. Also, I was thinking that Peter was a big jerk, unable to get over himself and accept that Ellen wanted to care for him, and unable to control his temper. Ugh, what a bore.

My feelings changed during the Second Act. I began to notice how crowded Peter was, how judged. Everyone was looking down on him, Ellen alone couldn't change the man and the society. The wall wasn't an abstraction of a fishing village, it was a physical manifestation of one. The great chorus' howls of "Peter Grimes! Peter Grimes!" created the single most powerful moment I have ever experienced in an opera - the entire chorus standing as close to the edge of the stage as possible, with no movement, shouting their harsh appraisal of the man.

The Third Act was devastating. Wasn't there a way to prevent the town from turning on Grimes? A way to prevent Peter from hitting Ellen in that moment of frustration, or preventing him from forcing the boy out in the storm? Yet the wall, the wave, was ceaseless. These things were all inevitable, like the waves that created the sea-worn wood. During the last scene of the play, the wall finally disappeared to reveal metal scaffolding and a group of people in modern dress looking down on the townspeople as they went about their small-town ways. I have no idea what this vaguely-meta moment meant, but I loved it. However I seem to be one of the few.

People I have talked to since have thought that the production rendered the plot incoherent, that the characters appearing in the doors and windows of the giant wall was too Laugh In, that the directing was far too stiff (most of the opera was in essence semi-staged). Everyone has praised the singing but not the production. I applaud the risk it took, and I have no idea if John Doyle intended the wave analogy, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. What a show.