Britten's Peter Grimes

This is the strongest cast that I have ever heard for Peter Grimes. The sweet-toned tenor of Stuart Skelton in the title role reminded me of Peter Peers. Elza van den Heever is outstanding as Ellen, both dramatically and vocally. There is an excellent ensemble of supporting characters plus a huge chorus representing The Borough, which is really another character in this opera.

Director David Alden sets the opera in the 1940's. It almost seems de rigueur these days to set an opera in the period it was written rather than the period that the composer intended. In a grim tale, perhaps it is excusable to try to inject some light relief but, in my view, Alden makes the minor characters too grotesque. I kept on getting the feeling that I was watching Dylan's Llareggub rather than Crabbe's Borough. Auntie, the pub owner, is a cross-dresser in a pinstripe suit and Bud Flanagan fur coat. Her nieces, usually ladies of easy virtue, are robotic schoolgirls. This gives an unhealthy edge to the interest shown in them by Bob Boles and Ned Keene. Keene, the apothecary, is portrayed as a 1940's spiv, in keeping with the period setting. I have to admit that the grotesquery does come into its own in the superbly choreographed and sung set pieces such as "Old Joe has gone fishing" and "Grimes is at his exercise".

The set is expressionist. This works well in the sharply-angled dockside of Act II but it is less successful in other scenes. Act I is confusing since it takes place in a bare box with just a few trestle tables for scenery. The crucial scene where Grimes' apprentice is killed while climbing down the cliff from his hut is botched because the boy clearly has to climb up a ladder to get out of the hut. The street scene in Act III is like something out of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

I think that this film is the ENO's first venture into live screening for a cinema audience. Apparently, the director's previous experience is in making pop videos. There are lots of flashy camera angles but I was continually disconcerted by the fact that the camera kept on showing one character while another was singing.

While all of Britten's operas are worth hearing and seeing more than once, 'Peter Grimes' has always been my personal favourite, for the haunting music, the most layered story of his operas, the complex characters (especially the title role) and an atmosphere that to me none of his other operas have quite as effectively.

Of the productions personally seen, the competition is strong, with the Phillip Langridge and Aldeburgh performances being particularly strong, this production fares the least by quite some way. It is watchable, due to being very impressive to brilliant musically, but too much of the staging was puzzling and the point of the opera is lost.

Faring the least is the staging. There are definitely moments, with parts that are genuinely moving and hair-raising. However, it was in need of more tragedy and conflict between individual compassion and social order necessity and could have had much, much less of the multi-sexual elements which just didn't belong in the setting and felt wrong within the story and the use of masturbation and urination that is more at home in the bathroom and should have stayed there because that felt out of place as well. The ending is occasionally hair-raising but is too busy and claustrophobic when it could have been more isolated and at times intimate.

The production has an expressionist touch, which is interesting at times but doesn't do much for the drama and has a tendency to swamp it. 'Peter Grimes' is an austere opera, but the other productions did do a better job at creating a more evocative sense of time and place whereas the spare and sparsely furnished production values felt rather too cold and extreme. Stuart Skelton does sing absolutely wonderfully in the title role, the tone colour, the powerful anguish and the bellowing intensity in the voice is spot-on but he doesn't quite convince in the acting which is a little stolid and somewhat benign.

However, there is very little to complain about it musically. The star is definitely Edward Gardner's nuanced and searingly intense conducting, none of which are lost through the entire production, and momentum is always sustained for every note and phrase of an opera over three hours long (yes even in the slow but effective tempos for the "Four Sea Interludes"). The orchestra shimmer in tone and musicality under him, and the chorus sing beautifully and are so engrossed in the drama that they make hairs stand up on the back of the neck.

Elza van den Heever is superb as Ellen, her voice is so interesting to listen to, especially in the difficult "Embroidery Aria" with its long lines, need of sustained legato and sometimes awkward intervals, and it is a loyal and heartfelt interpretation. Iain Paterson's powerful Balstrode, Leigh Melrose's smarmy Ned, Felicity Palmer's vividly vicious Mrs Sedley stand out in support, but really pretty much everybody impresses with only reservations for Skelton, who certainly isn't bad at all.

All in all, brilliant musically but not tragic and conflicted enough. 6/10 Bethany Cox