During WWII composer Benjamin Britten, an East Anglian lad, toyed with the idea of settling in America, but was drawn back to coastal Suffolk by a Victorian poem about life in the fishing village of Aldeburgh which became the basis for his first opera, “Peter Grimes”. Don’t, though, imagine an idyllic tale of simple fisherfolk – the opera offers a character study of an ambitious but intractably heavy-handed man who will eventually be rejected by his community (not simple and hardly saints) and find acceptance only by his real element, the sea. The brilliant stage design for this Opera North production evokes from the start the world of a tightly closed, self-judging society that works as a community but constructs its opinions via shifting patterns of loyalty and inclusion - and where the moods of the weather and the ocean are always ready to engulf mere human concerns. Peter Grimes (tenor John Findon) is a gloomy, lonely presence, brooding over ambitions for a prosperous life with school teacher Ellie (a lovely warm, confiding characterisation by Philippa Boyle) but as harsh towards everyone else as he is towards himself. One apprentice fisher lad has already been lost under his care and when he takes on another the outcome is portentously inevitable (via a breath-taking moment atop a vertiginous tower-like timber structure in a storm of music and pre-destined disaster.) The range of Britten’s musical modes and their subtle relationships with character and dialogue never fails to hit home, the more so here as  the main counterpoint to Grimes’ instinctively harsh attitude to life is the sea itself, an unspeaking elemental voice that must overwhelm everything else. This is never more apparent than in a conclusion where the subdued acceptance of a fate beyond choice resets our perspective on time, distance and human scale. A deeply thoughtful and moving production and performance, where set and lighting design provide perfect complements to music and narrative.

Gail-Nina Anderson