Customer Reviews

Britten: Peter Grimes (2 CD/1 CD-ROM)

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In the UK various labels turn out versions of Peter Grimes with regularity, and enough excellent sets have accumulated, including an iconic one under the composer, that new additions face stiff criticism. Haitink encountered smooth sailing, however, when this set appeared in 1993, based on a production at the Royal Opera (Philips had released another Covent Garden recording almost two decades earlier as a setting for the Grimes of Jon Vickers). The Gramophone called the EMI set inspired. I revisited it with fond memories, only to find that Haitink leads a very different Grimes than I remembered.

If Vickers delivers the most brutish and primal portrayal and Pears the most psychologically complex, Anthony Rolfe Johnson seems vulnerable to the point of fragility -- his sweet, slender tone evokes a poet rather than a tormented social outcast. In keeping with this, Haitink's conducting is also tender and at times quite restrained. My attention didn't wander, however, despite the lack of strong dramatic tension, because the orchestral detailing is exquisite, and EMI's sonics are considerably ahead of Philips's for Colin Davis and at least equal to Decca's for Britten. The composer famously disapproved of Vickers' Promethean characterization, which was full of immense anguish, and walked out before the end. I wonder what he would have thought of Rolfe Johnson. Peter's first aria, "What harbor shelters peace," emerged as the outcry of a wounded titan when Vickers sang it; Rolfe Johnson is much smaller scale and less heartrending. Similarly, Grimes's most famous song, "Now the Great Bear and Pleiades," is rendered lyrical and poetic, a thing of beauty rather than mystery.

What makes Haitink's reading coherent -- and this, I think, the composer would have liked -- is its strong sense of community. The opera contains many social scenes, and at times semi-comic interludes full of gossips, drunks, and lecherous lovers sit oddly cheek to jowl with disturbing scenes of Grimes's abuse of his boy apprentice. What Haitink and Rolfe Johnson are aiming at (I think) is to make Grimes less demented and possibly deviant. The central character has always been problematic, conveying as he does equal parts artist-outcast and antisocial-pathological case. (The troubling ambiguity is added to by our modern knowledge of Britten's suppressed pedophilia, a trait unknown to the public in 1945 and for many years thereafter.) Here Grimes is decidedly more sympathetic than on any other version, subsumed into the ensemble of village singing.

For me, it's valid to make the entire opera more beautiful; in that regard, Haitink achieves marvels from his soloists, chorus, and orchestra. As Ellen Orford, Felicity Lott contributes her beautiful Mozart-Strauss soprano, and Thomas Allen's Balstrode contributes his mellifluous, comfortable baritone. Neither reaches for psychological torment, but being exceptional artists, they make us feel their characters' suffering in a quiet, humane way. One senses that Ellen and Peter are a loving couple in this performance, unlike the usual bond, which pits her hopeless idealism against Peter's total unsuitability for marriage. I only wish the Lott had found more emotion for the Embroidery aria, where both she and Haitink flow too smoothly.

There was never a complete recording of the original cast in 1945, but Pears and his Ellen, Joan Cross, set down some excerpts in 1948. These have appeared in a box set of historical Britten recordings from EMI and once heard, will never be forgotten. The anguish and intensity of Pears at that stage in his career sear themselves into the mind -- his later portrayal is only a shadow of what he achieved there. Rolfe Johnson's breakdown into madness in the final scenes can't be compared to Pears -- it is dreamy, almost gentle, leaving no doubt that this Grimes was never a danger to anyone. By the same token, the townspeople searching for him are not a vindictive mob but almost merciful.

What I've taken considerable space to say is that this is a tender tragedy with fewer disturbing undertones than any rival set. One is haunted by the knowledge that Rolfe Johnson himself would die prematurely, at age 59, after a struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He left this moving, poetic portrayal behind.