Peter Grimes
(Is this the 22:35 or the 22:39? It makes almost twenty minutes of difference. I got to Waterloo, saw the destination I wanted first place on the board, which means it’s leaving NOW and ran for it. And ran, and ran, and ran, since it was one of these deals where the train nosed in to the station is empty and the train you want is in . . . Vauxhall Gardens, or possibly Kent. The platforms keep getting longer and longer, especially when you have a computer, 1.5 million pages of THE ART OF NOISE in hardback*, a pair of All Stars**, and a tin of tuna*** in your knapsack. Not to mention the camera, the RaspBerry, and the new opera on CD. The conductor was making Sports Gestures at us as we various weary travellers pelted for the door; the train pulled out maybe a minute after I got on. I can do without this level of excitement.)
So. The opera. I made it.
The music is glorious. I’ve never seen it before. I’m only belatedly getting into Britten at all; when I was still an American living in America, Britten was one of those composers that the Brits liked more than he deserved simply because he was British. Then I moved over here and started listening to Radio Three all the time† and began to think maybe the British weren’t so far off about him after all. I’d always liked his folk song arrangements–and his Lyke Wake Dirge–and of course lately I’m all over him because he wrote the interesting noise end of classical music which is the road I’m ridiculously attempting to toil up with my composing.
So the music is glorious–and in this production gloriously sung. Grimes himself (Stuart Skelton) is superb–the moment in the second scene when he walks in out of the storm, into the pub full of people who’ve been singing and scratching at each other and everything changes (including the music, of course) by his presence made me shiver. Orford, his might-have-been-sweetheart, is also superb, sung by the woman (Amanda Roocroft) who had the lead role in the Jenufa I saw a little while ago. All the second leads were good; perhaps I especially liked the carter, Hobson, with his floor-shaking bass. The chorus is also excellent: another shivery moment comes at the end of the first scene of the final act, when the townspeople have lathered themselves up into a hanging party, and are about to set off after Grimes. They shout his name over and over into the silence, and after the second or third repetition there’s a tiny little whine from the orchestra. It’s breathtaking.
There’s always a problem with hype: probably nothing can ever live up to being the whatsit of its generation, as this is supposed to be the Peter Grimes. I could find fault even with poor Stuart Skelton, if I wanted to: I don’t think his acting is quite up to his singing. But hype aside, I had some trouble with the production. My limited understanding of the opera is that part of the point, and the poignancy, is that there is very little moral difference between Grimes and the grim, self-righteous townspeople who condemn him; the deaths of his apprentices are accidents, culpable accidents, but he’s not a murderer. This gets a bit lost in the unpleasant surrealism of most of the rest of the cast. I have no clue why it was a good idea to present Auntie, who runs the pub, which is probably also a brothel, as Joel Grey in Cabaret. Another of the bottom lines about Peter Grimes–and this is in the programme notes, so it’s not just me being dim–is that it’s a study in what poverty can do: harden you, beat you down, strip you of your empathy and your charity. Arguably Grimes is the townspeople’s superior because he still dreams of kindness; he can still imagine a life with kindness in it. And this is why Orford stands out; because she still does have some kindness left in her. That she is in love with Grimes is also in his favour.
But you aren’t thinking ‘dirt-poor downtrodden end of nowhere fishing village’ when the owner of the pub is swanning around in a sharp suit and a fur coat.†† She’s also got a cane and a built-up shoe . . . so, right, she’s a crippled bull dyke. I’m not happy here. There’s a moment when she caresses Orford’s coat which I assume we’re supposed to pick up on . . . er, why? Especially because this makes a nonsense of the end of the first scene in the second act after Orford has discovered the bruise on Grimes’ latest apprentice, and she and Auntie and Auntie’s nieces sing of the hopelessness of loving men. Huh? –I don’t know if I want to tackle the nieces or not; I’ve always found them problematic and as Britten has written them they are pretty surreal. But dressing them up as school girls and then having them behave halfway between idiots and robots is not the choice I would have made. Also, it’s in the lyrics that they’re a draw for Auntie’s pub; they don’t have to lie on the floor††† in their school-girl uniforms and spread their legs–facing the audience, so their white knickers show‡–to emphasise this.‡‡
There’s other stuff. Grimes’ hut is supposed to be an overturned boat; in this production it’s a ferociously raked table that they clamber up and down, and Grimes’ neatness and order are demonstrated by a coil of rope and two chairs hanging on the wall. You don’t think, oh! How very tidy he is! He hangs his CHAIRS on the WALL! You think (again), huh? One thing I thought did work extremely well is the death of the current apprentice: Grimes knots the rope around the boy’s waist and pays it out as the boy (out of sight of the audience) goes down the new cliff the storm has gouged out of the shore; but he’s distracted briefly by the sound of the townsfolk baying for his blood, loses his grip, the rope slithers out of his hands and you hear the boy scream. The effect is somewhat spoilt however as the townspeople appear and start behaving as if the cliff is on the other side of the stage. Where is Marcel Marceau when you need him.
None of this ruins the music. The music is fascinating and beautifully performed; I had a lovely evening‡‡‡ and I’m glad I went. And I recommend it: I recommend Britten’s opera brilliantly sung and splendidly accompanied–and it was very interesting hearing the Interludes in context rather than as excerpted concert pieces–in a slightly wacky production that still allows the music to shine.
And I’m remarkably better today after yesterday. Every now and then the ME says oh, the hell with you, run along and play.§ And it was the fast train. I write this safely from the cottage kitchen, with an empty tin of tuna at my elbow . . . and two evil ratbag non-supper-eating hellhounds crashed out in their crate. But I had to pick up this computer and sprint for the door when the train unexpectedly stopped and announced the town where Wolfgang waited in the car park for me. Windows closes down amazingly slowly when you’re trying to get off a train.
* * *
* I need several more train rides to London to finish it. I wonder what else is on. . . .
** which is to say I managed to get into my lady shoes tonight. Indeed I’ve never been out of them. I’d decided to take the underground to the opera rather than walking across the bridge, which is what I usually do, because I’m still feeling pretty fragile and it was going to be a long evening. Then as I delicately descended the train steps as befits someone in lady shoes I thought, crumbs, I do not want to take the underground, it’ll get me there even sooner and even allowing half an hour to sip my traditional^ glass of champagne and study the programme book^^ I won’t be able to stay out of the CD shop. And I’ll walk slower still in lady shoes. So I walked.
It didn’t work. I was still there in plenty of time to go into the shop which is, of course, open late on opera evenings. Sigh. What did work however is the fact that while the bank sent me my new credit card^^^, they haven’t sent me its PIN number yet and I keep forgetting to look it up on line. I only had enough cash on me to buy a new(ish)^^^ PETER GRIMES. And the glass of champagne, of course.
^ I’ve now done it twice in row. It’s a tradition.
^^ There will be a test later: I have to write a frelling blog entry about it.
^^^ I did tell you they’d cancelled me again, didn’t I? Because they decided I’d been compromised.. This is the second time so far this year. I’m getting tired of memorising new credit card numbers, although watching the evolution–how much they change and where they change it–is kind of interesting. It’s not terribly reassuring however–I’d like it better if it seemed a lot more random. I hope this is only my lack of comprehension about numbers and randomness.
^^^^ It’s new if you’re used to the old Peter Pears one.
*** Which I’m too embarrassed to eat. This car seems to be entirely filled with people who had dinner at a reasonable hour and I’m sharing a table with an exceptionally clean shiny businessman with clean shiny toys (including a handheld I’m itching to ask searching personal questions about . . . it’s lying not six inches from me . . . but I’ll restrain myself). I’m starving to death.
† It’s Radio Three’s fault that I’ve become so very deeply uncool. Twenty years ago the only station worth listening to that we could get in the depths of Hampshire was Radio Three. By the time digital came along–or rather by the time I could get digital anywhere but in my attic at the cottage–it was too late. If you ripped the Radio Three wetware patch off me at this point I’d bleed to death.
†† And the apothecary-quack looks like something out of Guys and Dolls, which doesn’t say poor downtrodden end of nowhere either.
††† This production signally fails the Rolling Around on the Floor test. After an especially gruesome Lucia di Lammermore, in which Lucia spends most of her on-stage time collapsing in grief/horror/shock/aggravated wussness and rolling around on the floor, Peter and I added this rule to the Stage FAIL list. There’s way too much forbidden rolling in this production: Grimes himself gets a roll or two in during his mad scene.
‡ Okay, there are disadvantages to being too close to the stage. And, by the way, I was in row three, which in terms of not getting a crick in your neck looking up, is about right. And I had The Largest Head in the Universe in front of me in row two. It was a whole–ahem–head taller than the heads on either side of it.
‡‡ I’ve always thought they weren’t prostitutes, which to me is more interesting, and also explains why they cling together so extravagently–which is also in both the libretto and Britten’s stage notes.
‡‡‡ In spite of the Head. And I haven’t told you about the belching, farting, superfluously-rather-off-smelling gentleman to my right, and the cougher behind me to the left.
§ Of course it may nail me tomorrow instead. But it does at least look like the stomach thing isn’t coming back.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.