VSO SHOULD GET BEST OUT OF GRIMES
Britten’s landmark opera is served well when backed by an orchestra
A pair of end-of-an-era concerts is on offer at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony (June 16-18) will mark the official end of Bramwell Tovey’s stint as music director, but before that come two rare concert performances of Benjamin Britten’s landmark opera Peter Grimes.
Doing Grimes in concert is obviously a project dear to maestro Tovey’s heart. His previous Britten performances, including the rarely heard Violin Concerto with Dale Barltrop in 2013 and the War Requiem the following year, have been remarkable. And given that Tovey’s own opera The Inventor is about a complicated and ultimately tragic individual, I think it’s safe to say that the Tovey choice of Britten’s most successful opera isn’t accidental.
More than any other composer from the U.K., Britten has a special place in Vancouver’s musical saga. He made several visits here, and performed in the then-new Queen Elizabeth Theatre with his partner, tenor Peter Pears, in 1960. Vancouver saw an early performance of his pageant opera Noye’s Fludde, as well as the North American premiere of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, in the heady days of the Vancouver International Festival.
A quick look in the archives revealed that music from Peter Grimes was first heard at a VSO concert directed by Jacques Singer in 1949, just four years after the opera took London by storm and changed the way the world saw the young composer.
A staunch pacifist, Britten tried to sit out the Second World War in the U.S., only to return to Britain at some personal risk during the war years. In London, Britten had the reputation of a facile but perhaps emotionally shallow talent. Scoffers went to the June 1945 premiere of Grimes (“The first real sign in the London musical world that peace is upon us,” commented the Guardian) expecting nothing of import. Instead what they heard was the greatest British opera of the age.
It’s not a happy story. Peter Grimes is a character at odds with his society. Is he mad? Is he misunderstood? Is he a murderer? The opera exposes his life in painful detail but doesn’t give us an answer. It has a wealth of great vocal parts — large and small — and thrilling moments for chorus.
But I would argue the work’s abiding glory is Britten’s use of the orchestra. In an opera house (where costs are everything and orchestra pits small), we rarely hear an orchestra able to demonstrate the overwhelming sweep of the score.
As opera-in-concert with the full sonic resources of an entire symphony orchestra, we will hear Britten’s music in the best possible circumstances. And, knowing the score, I can safely say that the drama of the piece is carried by the music and the singers: sets, movement, and lighting won’t be missed.
Especially given the cast. Tenor David Pomeroy has the title role, a part conceived by Britten for Peter Pears. Erin Wall, last heard here in the first Vancouver Opera Festival production of Otello, sings Ellen Orford (hang on to your hats for the profound and emotionally devastating Sunday Morning scene, one of the score’s pivotal moments). A trio of Vancouver favourites, Gregory Dahl, Brett Polegato, and Susan Platts, makes up a supporting cast of rare distinction.
Ending the Tovey era with Mahler is both apt, grand, and celebratory. Preceding it with a once-in-a-lifetime attempt at a definitive Peter Grimes is brave, wonderful, and characteristic.
C’MON, ANGIE! Robert Moloney and Kayla Deorksen star in C’mon, Angie! Read the review online at Vancouversun.com