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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Great Operas
- Sprache: Englisch
Britten's opera Peter Grimes is based on George Crabbe's horrifying poem The Borough about early 19th century Aldeburgh, a North Sea fishing town in East Anglia. Its premiere at Sadlers Wells in 1945, shortly after VE Day, was a landmark moment in British operatic history. Britten's partner Peter Pears – like Britten a pacifist and conscientious objector – was in the title role. Britten and Pears, together with Montagu Slater, a communist journalist, created the libretto.Grimes, a fisherman and sadistic child abuser, is a loner longing for social acceptance, and the wealth to marry the retired schoolmistress Ellen Orford. Britten, a homosexual whose circle included E.M. Forster and Christopher Isherwood, wanted to win sympathy for outsiders. Yet after Grimes has destroyed yet another apprentice, and himself committed suicide, life just goes on as usual in the bustling, hypocritical town. 'The Borough' has a pompous mayor, a typical pub landlady, a drunken Methodist, an ineffectual parson, a drug-addicted rich widow. A pub brawl and barn dance conceal the dark side of this community: its hysteria, its busybodies, its lynch-mob justice. The opera and its story, as depicted in Britten's evocative music, haunts the audience long after the curtain comes down. Written by Michael Steen, author of the acclaimed The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, 'Short Guides to Great Operas' are concise, entertaining and easy to read. They are packed with useful information and informed opinion, helping to make you a truly knowledgeable opera-goer, and so maximising your enjoyment of a great musical experience.Other 'Short Guides to Great Operas' that you may enjoy include La Bohème, Don Giovanni and Eugene Onegin.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Published in the UK in 2012 by Icon Books Ltd,
Omnibus Business Centre, 29–41 North Road, London N7 9DP
email: [email protected]
www.iconbooks.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-84831-540-2 (ePub format)
ISBN: 978-1-84831-541-9 (Adobe ebook format)
Text copyright © 2012 Michael Steen
The author has asserted his moral rights.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Typesetting by Marie Doherty
CONTENTS
Title page
Copyright
PREFACE
USING THIS EBOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRITTEN’S PETER GRIMES
THE OPERA AND ITS COMPOSER
WHO’S WHO AND WHAT’S WHAT
THE INTERVAL: TALKING POINTS
Fishermen’s apprenticeships
Crabbe’s Grimes
More than a sadist
Grimes’s divided character
Musical style
Balstrode’s abandonment of music
ACT BY ACT
Prologue
Act 1
Act 2
Act 3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sources of quotes
Other sources
NOTES
Short Guides to Great Operas
PREFACE
This guide is aimed at the ordinary opera-goer and opera-lover, usually a busy person who wants to know the essentials of the opera but has little time to grasp them.
It provides key background information to Peter Grimes, told engagingly by someone who knows the opera intimately.
It is light, easy to read, and entertaining. Relevant information has been carefully selected to enhance your appreciation of Britten’s work.
It is authoritative, but not dense or academic. It is unburdened with the clutter that can easily be obtained elsewhere. It concentrates on information that it will help you to know in advance.
Read quickly before going to the opera or listening to it at home, you will get the very best out of the performance and have a truly enjoyable experience.
Opera can be a great social occasion. Being knowledgeable and well-informed, you’ll appreciate this magical art-form much more if you read this first.
I hope you enjoy the opera!
Michael Steen
USING THIS EBOOK
A very quick grasp of the opera can be gained by reading the opening section on ‘The opera and its composer’ and the ensuing ‘Who’s who and what’s what’. Further elaboration may be found in the sections entitled ‘The interval: talking points’ and ‘Act by act’.
The footnotes and boxes are an integral part of the information. The reader is encouraged to go to these by following the links.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Steen OBE studied at the Royal College of Music, was organ scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, and has been chairman of both the RCM Society and the Friends of the V&A Museum. He is a trustee of the Gerald Coke Handel Foundation and Anvil Arts, and Treasurer of The Open University. He is the author of The Lives and Times of the Great Composers (2003) and Enchantress of Nations: Pauline Viardot, Soprano, Muse and Lover (2007).
BRITTEN’SPETER GRIMES
A SHORT GUIDE TO A GREAT OPERA
The opera and its composer
Who’s who and what’s what
The interval: talking points
Act by act
THE OPERA AND ITS COMPOSER
‘One of the most significant events in British operatic history’ is how the première of Peter Grimes has been described. It ‘stamped Britten as the most gifted music dramatist England had produced since Purcell.’1 It was adopted eagerly by foreign houses,2 and it secured his international reputation.
It has been included ‘amongst the greatest of all operas.’ Although the smaller stage at London’s Sadlers Wells, where it was premièred, gave it a suitably claustrophobic atmosphere, Peter Grimes is intended for a large audience in a large theatre. It consists of three acts, with a total running time of about two-and-a-half hours.
In 1941, during the Second World War, Benjamin Britten was living in self-imposed exile in California. He read an article by E.M. Forster – the novelist best known for A Passage to India and Howard’s End and who was a member of Britten’s homosexual circle – about George Crabbe, the Suffolk poet who left his birthplace at Aldeburgh, but never escaped from it ‘in spirit’. Crabbe and his poem The Borough, alias Aldeburgh, struck a particular chord with Britten, who, at heart, was longing to be back home in England. He and his partner Peter Pears, who was to be the first Grimes, soon recognised the potential for creating an opera based on Crabbe’s horrifying tale.
Financial support was supplied by a Foundation which Serge Koussevitsky, the Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor, had set up in memory of his second wife. Although many of the ideas and memorable phrases came from Pears, Britten used, as librettist, Montagu Slater, a communist journalist and poet. Britten was prone to change libretti to suit what he wanted or had already composed. Although other great composers have also done this, the relationship with Slater was rocky.
Britten had originally wanted a libretto from the novelist Christopher Isherwood, best known for Mr Norris Changes Trains, but the invitation was turned down bluntly: the subject did not excite Isherwood enough ‘that he wanted to make time for it’. This was probably a stroke of luck: in a tortuous way, Slater, although ‘resistant to change and slow in delivering agreed revisions’, generated what Britten wanted, and he gave constructive advice. The strong-willed composer took all the decisions. A libretto handed over by the more prominent Isherwood might have been a fait accompli, and very difficult to change.
