Britten, Benjamin

Subterms

    Latest story

    88 Shares119 Views

    Benjamin Britten’s ‘Peter Grimes’ Arrives in Paris

    by

    Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes,” directed by Deborah Warner in her Paris Opera debut, reintroduces a 20th-century composer to French audiences.The bitter and bloodthirsty townspeople who make up the chorus in Benjamin Britten’s 1945 opera “Peter Grimes” might feel like a sort of welcoming committee for the British director Deborah Warner, who is making her debut at the Paris Opera.She’s more than happy to be rejoining the cold and stern world of “Peter Grimes.” It was a privilege to bring Britten’s work “more into the French consciousness,” she said in an interview.This production, which she also directed in its debut at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 2021 and at the Royal Opera in London last year, is for Ms. Warner the consummate example of a modern British opera still being discovered beyond Britain — and particularly across the English Channel in France, where Britten has intrigued many operagoers.“Peter Grimes” tells the story of an outcast fisherman in a seaside English village who is accused of drowning his apprentice but is embraced by the sympathetic Ellen, who later begins to suspect that he may indeed be a villain. The townspeople turn on Grimes as the opera spirals toward its tragic climax. The production, with Ms. Warner again at the helm, has a slightly different cast but with the tenor Allan Clayton in the title role as before. It plays a total of nine performances at the Palais Garnier, Jan. 26 through Feb. 24. “One of the things I love about an opera revival is that it’s a way of developing the piece, and to get it there and take it further,” she said by phone during rehearsals in Paris. “You might have 75 to 125 performances in the theater, but in opera you have far less.”Her sense of rediscovery with “Peter Grimes” is what drives her passion for opera, which she admittedly came to after years of directing theater, often collaborating with the actress Fiona Shaw in a famous “Richard II” in the 1990s (in which Ms. Shaw played the lead) and “Medea,” “Mother Courage and Her Children” and others in the 2000s and after.Deborah Warner, the director of “Peter Grimes,” said it was a privilege to bring Benjamin Britten’s work “more into the French consciousness.”E. Bauer/Onp“I was part of a big generation that were brought from the theater to opera, for me kicking and screaming,” said Ms. Warner, 63. “My parents didn’t listen to opera. I had no exposure to it.”Mystery could also be at the core of Britten’s history in France, a country long known for its love of romantic opera. Britten had a certain amount of early success in France, as he did across the continent and the world, with “Peter Grimes” and “Billy Budd,” written in 1951.But the French “didn’t quite understand Britten, and he didn’t quite understand them,” said Paul Kildea, the author of “Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century” and the artistic director of Musica Viva Australia, in a phone interview from Melbourne. “There was always something dangerous about France.”“He felt very trapped in England,” Mr. Kildea added.France became an early influence for Britten in a way that many opera fans may not realize, Mr. Kildea said. He had his own sense of discovery as he began his creative life.“He spoke French and went there in the early ’30s, and then later with his mother,” he said. “But the amazing moment for him was in 1937 after his mother dies and he goes to Paris and searches for Oscar Wilde’s grave, unsuccessfully and traumatically visits a brothel and tries to come to terms with who he is as an adult and a musician.”Despite the mixed reception in England and France of the original “Peter Grimes” and “Billy Budd,” about a handsome and beloved sailor and the master-of-arms aboard an 18th-century British naval vessel who is determined to destroy him, the French understood something a bit more subtle.“I think the French got a lot of the gay subtext of ‘Billy Budd’ long before the English started writing about it,” he said.The subtlety and obscurity of Britten’s work keep it interesting for Ms. Warner. She has never been as drawn to directing the grand Italian and French operas. Her first real exposure to the largely atonal opera style was Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck,” about a soldier’s degradation and demise.Britten outside the Sadler’s Wells Theater in London, with his script for “Peter Grimes.” The opera premiered there on June 7, 1945.Popperfoto, via Getty Images“I only liked ‘Wozzeck’ because I had worked on the [Georg] Büchner play of the same title, so I had heard the music and loved it,” she said. “Some of the more contemporary operas are the calling cards to woo the new generation, in my opinion, because they’re incredibly immediate and visceral.”Coincidentally, Ms. Warner finds parallels between “Wozzeck” (which she will direct in a new production for the Royal Opera in London starting in May) and “Peter Grimes” (she also directed “Billy Budd” at the Royal Opera and has staged other Britten operas, including “Death in Venice” and “Turn of the Screw” around the world). She sees the chorus as a central and important character, and a dangerous and mistreated one at that.“With Britten the dramatic mastery and the music mastery are equal, and he was searching for the same dark world that Berg was,” Ms. Warner said. “There is a remarkable similarity to the brutalized community that makes ‘Grimes’ work. The terrible behavior of this monstrous chorus has to come from somewhere.”And that ever-present chorus presents its own set of challenges with mostly French singers delivering English words in the harsh and accusatory tones that Britten wrote for the townspeople’s descent on Grimes.“The challenge of Britten in France is the language, but I don’t think the music is harmonically or rhythmically difficult,” said Ching-Lien Wu, chorus master for the Paris Opera, in a recent phone interview from Paris. “You have to not overreact to the music. If you sing a romantic Italian piece, you can do that. You can’t do that with Britten.”A scene from a 1945 production of “Peter Grimes.”Alex Bender/Picture Post/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesOver the decades, Mr. Kildea said, Britten’s contribution to opera has gradually become more a part of the repertory in French opera houses.“It’s partly an aesthetic thing, because when they first took ‘Turn of the Screw’ to Paris in 1956, for example, it was just too far removed from the concept of grand opera,” he said.“Britten wasn’t part of the French virtuoso. A lot of my French friends talk about stumbling upon Britten. They wouldn’t have had that exposure in school or on the radio.”Ms. Warner sees the premiere of “Peter Grimes” at the Sadler’s Wells Theater in London on June 7, 1945, as a seminal moment in opera history.“It’s a miracle that ‘Grimes’ is such a success,” she said. “This opera happened right at the end of the war. There we are with the grumpiest fisherman on the planet, and it’s a deeply uncomfortable and vicious and nasty story.“The right people must have been in the audience that night,” she added. “We owe a debt of gratitude to those 800 people who were at Sadler’s Wells that night.” More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Review: A Tenor Claims His Place Among the Met Opera’s Stars

      by

      Allan Clayton brings pathos and terror, along with energy where it’s often missing, to a revival of Britten’s “Peter Grimes.”Benjamin Britten’s first, masterly opera “Peter Grimes” thrives on ambiguity — about the nature of abusive behavior, the sources of compassion, the chicken-and-egg relationship between a tortured psyche and a small town’s small-mindedness.But one thing, at least, was clear when this work returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Sunday afternoon: The company has a star on its hands in the tenor Allan Clayton.An established singer abroad, Clayton made his Met debut just this year, tireless and tormented in the title role of Brett Dean’s “Hamlet.” Back several months later, he is by far the high point of the company’s “Grimes” revival. Nimble, with a repertory that includes Handel alongside Kurt Weill’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” he is bound for a rich future at the house if it will have him.Clayton’s Grimes stands apart not only in his appearance — unkempt, with windswept hair and a wiry beard, where his fellow inhabitants of the Borough look uniformly tidy, as though following a dress code — but also in his actions. He whips his head around with widened, piercing eyes, never at peace and paranoid about how others perceive him. Audibly and visibly doomed, his tone conveys bitterness and pain within the same melodic line as his face betrays fits of rage and shock at his own behavior. By the climactic third act, his voice exemplifies the essence of opera as a theatrical extremity of expression: His mad scene, a patchwork monologue of chest-pounding and stylized ugliness, is a thing of terror and wonder.His performance, reminiscent of Jon Vickers’s fearless benchmark recording from the 1970s, is nearly enough to breathe sustainable life into a production that often lacks it. John Doyle’s staging, from 2008 — which unfolds on a unit set of towering, shabby wooden walls and windows — is showing its age as it creakily moves forward and backward throughout the opera’s two and a half hours.Doyle’s signature approach — what has been called minimalist, though he prefers “essentialist” — was born in modest black box spaces, and eventually scaled to Tony Award-winning takes on Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” and “Company” on Broadway. His “Grimes” is a relic of that time but not as successful in 2022. His stripped-down aesthetic can reveal the heart of a work, but it relies on the detailed, well-rehearsed performances you won’t get with the short turnaround of a Met revival. So cast members tend to sing with little nuance at the audience, rather than to one another, and mostly while standing in place as they would in concert.Still, Clayton wasn’t alone in transcending the production. Nicholas Carter, who also made his Met debut conducting “Hamlet,” here led “Grimes” with drive, precision and a painterliness that lends the work the cohesive shape of a tone poem. His interludes evoked dark, oceanic immensity; violent swerves and surges; and the emerging promise of a dawning sun. They were a source of theater where the staging came up short.Dynamic, too, was Nicole Car as the widowed schoolmistress with hopeless belief in Grimes’s salvation. Car’s soprano, with lyrical grace at the top of her range and grave urgency at the bottom, was on Sunday a wellspring of calm and pathos. In the Prologue, her tone blended with Clayton’s gruff beauty for a duet of unsettling harmony.And, despite moving as a unit, then remaining static for long stretches, the Met’s chorus was compelling as the chattering, destructive residents of the Borough. Its members gave horrifying voice to mob mentality, complementing Clayton’s unraveling in Act III with a chilling climax of their own. Occasionally emerging from the crowd were other standouts: Justin Austin’s lively Ned Keene; Patrick Carfizzi’s authoritative Swallow; Michaela Martens’s wickedly comical Mrs. Sedley.Less persuasive were the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves as Auntie, in a performance more straightforwardly musical than characterful; and the bass-baritone Adam Plachetka as Balstrode, a major, complicated role that didn’t make much of an impression on Sunday. His voice beautiful but consistently bland, Plachetka gave his fateful directions to Grimes at the end of Act III — to take his boat out to sea and sink it — with a woodenness that threatened to flatten the moment.That is, if it weren’t for Clayton’s response. Silent, he simply accepted his sentence with one last look back over his shoulder: an aching final aria performed with only his eyes.Peter GrimesThrough Nov. 12 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      'Peter Grimes' Review: Opera Stars Take On an Omicron-Battered Vienna

      by

      The tenor Jonas Kaufmann and the soprano Lise Davidsen are leading a luxuriously cast revival of Britten’s “Peter Grimes.”VIENNA — Whenever I open Instagram these days, it seems, I’m served an ad for “Hamilton.” Once a destination musical that took months of planning or deep pockets to see, it is now algorithmically spreading the word that last-minute tickets are up for grabs, no #Ham4Ham lottery required.Such is the state of live performance as the Omicron variant upends shows and keeps wary audiences at home.Take the Vienna State Opera, one of the world’s great companies and a major tourist attraction. Forced to close for nearly a week in December because of the coronavirus, it is only now returning to full capacity. Nearly 450 seats (in a house with just over 1,700) were still unsold on Wednesday morning, with mere hours to go until the opening of a luxuriously cast revival of Britten’s “Peter Grimes” — ostensibly one of the hottest tickets in Europe, featuring the star tenor Jonas Kaufmann and the fast-rising soprano Lise Davidsen.By curtain time, the house appeared much fuller, but hundreds of tickets remain available for each future performance. It’s easy to see why people might be discouraged, and why the company is practically begging for attendance: Visitors to the State Opera, who are required to wear N95-quality masks inside the building, must also be fully vaccinated and boosted, as well as tested (by P.C.R., pointedly not antigen) for the virus.I wasn’t alone in scrambling to produce all the necessary documents as I entered: an ID, a nontransferable ticket, a certificate of vaccination and a negative test result — which came with a 70-euro price tag because I had traveled from Berlin, where rapid tests are widely available and free, but P.C.R. ones are not.The things we do for opera.And, in this case, for the opportunity to hear Kaufmann in his debut as Peter Grimes, as well as Davidsen in her first staged performance as Ellen Orford — initial impressions of roles these artists are rumored to be taking elsewhere in future seasons, including the Metropolitan Opera.In this production, Kaufmann’s Grimes is literally burdened by ropes.Wiener Staatsoper/Michael PoehnOften stranded by Christine Mielitz’s neon-streaked staging of the opera — a psychologically complex tragedy of provincial cruelty and loneliness — Kaufmann and Davidsen seemed forced to rely on their dramatic instincts rather than a cohesive vision. Although the evening was far from a disaster and was warmly received, neither singer appears to have found a new signature role.Kaufmann, in particular, struggled to trace clearly his character’s decline from social isolation to volatility and suicidal delirium. A fisherman who is believed by mobbish villagers to have killed his apprentices, Grimes carries the weight of perception; in this production, he is literally burdened by ropes and the bodies of the boys who died under his watch. Sounding likewise weighed, Kaufmann mostly sang in shades of weariness, with an overreliance on floated pianissimos punctuated by outbursts more heroic than pained or violent.If this approach — steadfastly resigned rather than mercurial — made for static storytelling, it paid off in Grimes’s climactic mad scene. Having long sulked under a halo of anguish, Kaufmann was all the more moving in this hushed monologue, lending an inevitability to his character’s death.But in this scene, as throughout the opera, Britten scatters spiky marcato and staccato articulation. Kaufmann opted instead for a consistent legato, sometimes at odds with the orchestra and, in extreme cases, slurring phrases into unintelligibility.Ellen Orford requires more modesty than the mighty Wagner and Strauss roles that have swiftly made Davidsen famous.Wiener Staatsoper/Michael PoehnDavidsen’s Ellen is a departure from the mighty Wagner and Strauss roles that have swiftly made her famous. “Grimes” requires comparative modesty, a challenge she met on Wednesday with graceful control — judiciously deploying the reverberation she is capable of when needed to illustrate her iron will in the face of a small town’s rushed judgments, and dropping to a glassy pianissimo in moments of convincing despair. She matched the score’s precise indications with crisp delivery and diction, but also, in Act II, wove a delicately doleful quartet with Noa Beinart as Auntie and Ileana Tonca and Aurora Marthens as the two Nieces.The other star onstage was the bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, as Balstrode — who is, aside from Ellen, the only resident of “the Borough” (as the town is called) who treats Grimes with some sympathy. But that was difficult to discern in this performance; Terfel’s robust voice had a touch of wickedness, with smirks here and there that made it seem as though he were encouraging Grimes’s destructive path. It came as no surprise when Balstrode, at last, told the poor Grimes to sink with his boat at sea.Other cast members stood out, for better and worse: the affecting textures of Martin Hässler’s Ned Keene and the dark comedy of Thomas Ebenstein’s Bob Boles; but also the shouty cries of Stephanie Houtzeel’s Mrs. Sedley, an interpretation better fit for Brecht than Britten.The conductor Simone Young shaped enormous peaks and valleys of sound in the orchestra. The great interludes were distinct narratives: the first setting a tone with its chilling thinness, the third angular and balletic, the fifth gently rocking yet tense. And the chorus, monochromatically costumed and often moving in unison, sang with as much richly defined character as any single performer onstage. In Act III, its members truly embodied the destructive power of a determined mob.That scene is one of the most horrifying in opera, a grand climax in a work that, when performed at this level, makes any onerous safety protocol worthwhile. If you can get over that hurdle, there are several opportunities — and many, many tickets — left to hear it for yourself.Peter GrimesThrough Feb. 8 at the Vienna State Opera; wiener-staatsoper.at. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      ‘Peter Grimes’ Sails on Choppy Seas of Brexit and the Pandemic

      by

      A production of Benjamin Britten’s opera at the Teatro Real in Madrid highlights the difficult new conditions for British artists working in the European Union.MADRID — In a new production of “Peter Grimes” that premiered at the Teatro Real opera house here on Monday, the people of an English seaside town wave the British flag, and pack into a pub seeking shelter from a sudden downpour.Benjamin Britten’s 1945 opera about an ill-fated fisherman is one of the most quintessentially English works in the opera repertoire, but Britain’s recent exit from the European Union, coupled with a travel ban and other restrictions triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, has made staging it in Madrid a journey across choppy and uncharted waters.“Having to deal with Brexit and the pandemic at the same time was diabolical,” Joan Matabosch, the artistic director of the Teatro Real, said in an interview.Allan Clayton as Peter Grimes, left, and the dancer Juan Leiba in the Teatro Real production.Javier del Real/Teatro RealA chorus representing the townspeople surrounding Clayton, lying on the stage floor.Javier del Real/Teatro RealThe show is a coproduction with three other theaters, including the Royal Opera House in London, where it is scheduled to play next March, and 17 people had to travel from Britain to Madrid for rehearsals and performances. Almost all the production’s lead singers are British, as is its director, Deborah Warner.Until Jan. 1, while Britain was in a transition period after its departure from the European Union, British performers could work throughout the bloc without visas. Since then, they have to apply country by country for entry visas and short-stay work permits. Each E.U. member state has set its own requirements, making it even more complex for artists who want to tour the continent.Rehearsals in Madrid started two weeks late, because of difficulties getting visas and a travel ban introduced after a new variant of the coronavirus was identified in England late last year. The performance schedule had to be shortened by one show, with fewer rest days, to allow the British members of the cast to leave Spain within the 90-day limit of their visas. Gregorio Marañón, the Teatro Real’s president, said that he personally spoke with three Spanish ministers to help with the paperwork required for the British visitors.Matabosch said that many of the production’s difficulties arose “because nobody really seemed to know how the new Brexit rules applied. So we had some people who had to make three attempts to reach Madrid, but at least finally everybody got here.”The auditorium of the Teatro Real at the premiere on Monday.Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York TimesPlastic screens have been set up in the orchestra pit between the conductor’s podium and the musicians.Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York TimesUshers at the theater are also taking extra safety precautions.Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York TimesOpera productions are planned well in advance. Four years ago, when the Teatro Real decided to schedule “Peter Grimes” for 2021, Britain had recently voted in a referendum to leave the European Union, “but nobody imagined it would take so long for Brexit to actually happen,” Matabosch said.Negotiations between the British government and the European Union dragged on because Brussels did not want Britain to cherry-pick benefits that apply to its member states while freeing itself of membership obligations. Even after an overall deal was completed, the specifics of many issues were left unresolved, including how travel visas would work for artists.In Britain, a parliamentary inquiry is underway, spurred by a chorus of criticism about the post-Brexit situation for performers, with complaints from major pop stars like Elton John and Dua Lipa. In February, Britain’s culture minister, Oliver Dowden, blamed Brussels for rejecting a British proposal to grant British artists eased access to the 27 remaining E.U. nations. “It is worth noting that what we put forward was what the music industry had asked for,” Mr. Dowden argued before Parliament. But Michel Barnier, Brussels’ chief negotiator, has insisted that it was London that rejected last year an E.U. offer to agree special terms for traveling musicians and other artists.Warner was scathing about the lack of a deal for British artists, saying that the production’s visa problems were the result of “the scandalous negligence of the U.K. negotiators who have failed utterly the music world.”Deborah Warner, the production’s director, said: “I had my doubts about how likely this was, and, at certain moments before I got here, how wise this was.”Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York Times“Having to deal with Brexit and the pandemic at the same time was diabolical,” said Joan Matabosch, the artistic director of the Teatro Real.Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York TimesSpain was among the countries worst hit at the start of the pandemic, when hospitals in Madrid overflowed with Covid-19 patients. But after a national state of emergency was lifted last summer, Madrid’s opera house reopened, alongside many other theaters across Spain.Since then, the regional authorities governing Madrid have kept Spain’s capital among the most bustling cities in Europe, even though the number of coronavirus cases has recently been creeping up again. While the Teatro Real had to cancel some ballet and orchestra shows, it has staged several operas successfully.The opera house said it had spent about €240,000 — nearly $290,000 — on regularly testing employees and guest workers and that around 20 had to go into self-isolation last month, including cast members for “Peter Grimes.”In an interview before Monday’s opening night, Warner, the director, said: “I had my doubts about how likely this was, and, at certain moments before I got here, how wise this was.” She said she felt “there was a craziness” to the Teatro Real’s plan to stage “Peter Grimes,” which is about a close-knit community and could not be done with social distancing onstage.But looking back, she also said that key themes in Britten’s “shocking opera,” including its references to English nationalism, resonated with “the stress of these times.”The opera house said it had spent about €240,000 on regularly testing employees and guest workers.Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York TimesIn Madrid, the British singers welcomed the chance to perform in a major “Peter Grimes” production involving about 150 artists, at a time when most opera houses in Europe and the United States are closed, but they also sounded anxious about what would come afterward.James Gilchrist, who sings the part of a priest in Britten’s opera, said that 90 percent of his work had been in the European Union rather than in Britain, which made him worried not only about his own future but also the prospects for younger artists. “If you are a promoter in Frankfurt or somewhere like that, you are not going to want to put a British artist at the top of your list, because it is just such a hassle,” he said.“For very well-established artists, that is probably less of a problem because their name on the poster will bring people in, but if you are more at the beginning of your career, I think this is going to be very, very hard.”Matabosch said the Teatro Real was committed to having the best possible lineups, irrespective of nationality. He forecast that the post-Brexit travel rules would become easier to navigate, but he acknowledged that British performers risked losing substitution work, which is an important part of their incomes.“I’m sure that we will end up knowing exactly how to bring over a British singer, just as people also come here from Australia or Canada. But the problem is that if you need a last-minute replacement and have to fly somebody over that very morning, this is not really doable from Britain at the moment,” Matabosch said.Another British member of the “Peter Grimes” cast, John Graham-Hall, thanked the Teatro Real for helping overcome travel hurdles that left him with “the very nasty feeling that the British government does not care about the arts.” He also gave a succinct summary of the twin hurdles raised by Brexit and the pandemic: “It’s a bloody nightmare.”Alex Marshall More