The extent to which the eponymous fisherman in Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes is to blame for the ensuing tragedy is a matter to be debated by directors and audiences alike every time the work is performed. Unlike the sadistic bully in George Crabbe’s original poem, the Grimes created by Britten and his librettist Montagu Slater is a good deal more empathetic: industrious, orderly and with a visionary streak. Yet his negligent lapses are responsible for not one but two apprentices’ deaths.
Several productions in recent years have emphasised the role of society in causing the tragedy. In his 2009 staging for ENO David Alden presented a gallery of grotesques drawing on German Expressionist cabaret, Magritte-style surrealism and film noir. The last production at Covent Garden, by Willy Decker in 2011, depicted the Borough as an amorphous black mass, constantly shifting shape but ever sinister and hostile.
