John Findon, Peter Grimes; Elizabeth Llewellyn, Ellen Orford; Simon Bailey, Balstrode; Christine Rice, Auntie; Clive Bayley, Swallow; Alex Otterburn, Ned Keene; ??, Bob Boles; Anne-Marie Owens, Mrs Sedley; David Soar, Hobson; Ronald Samm, Reverend Horace Adams; Cleo Lee-McGowan, First Niece; Ava Dodd, Second Niece. Conductor, Martyn Brabbins
I missed the raved-about production of Peter Grimes at Covent Garden last year because of Covid. I saw a good Stefan Herheim production last summer in Munich and now, more than a year later, another well reviewed production. Somehow I was much more affected by the music this time round than I had been in Munich- this might have something to do with the fact that I’d brought the wrong pair of glasses and so I couldn’t always follow the surtitles…..! It seems remarkable to me now that when I first heard the Four Sea Interludes, it would only have been 24 years after the work’s first performance – it’s like looking back to the year 2000 today. It is a remarkably haunting and affecting work.
Gwynn Hughes Jones has been much praised by the critics for his portrayal of Peter Grimes in this run of performance and so it was with disappointment that I saw an announcement that he was off sick. However I was fascinated by the choice of the understudy to replace him – this was John Findon. John was Mime in the recent ENO Rhinegold but also we had had an evening with him at the Manchester Wagner Society, where he spoke about his career and hopes for the future. This was a big moment for him and I was certainly rooting for him as he came on stage. Thus, what follows may not be as objective as it might otherwise be…..I thought John was a very fine Grimes – not the equal of Vickers, but certainly less anxiety-inducing than Stuart Skelton in Munich (see review on this blog). First of all, his voice has heft and power, the top notes at full intensity ringing out thrillingly. Goodness, I thought, this man is a future Tristan or a Siegmund. Secondly his quiet singing was (with a couple of exceptions) well grounded and often beautiful – ‘Now the Great Bear’ moved me to tears, as well sung as I have ever heard it live – and this was far removed from Skelton’s occasional falsetto. He’s also a big man and so could move convincingly and was utterly credible as Grimes. My only criticism would be that on a couple of occasions his voice wavered in dealing with very high notes sung quietly – but this was preferable to being nervous all the time about whether Skelton’s top notes would crack…..John had been scheduled to play Bob Boles and whoever replaced him also sung very well.
The other distinctive singer I really appreciated was Elizabeth Llewellyn. I have only heard her (I think) as a (very fine) recitalist and concert soloist. I realised that she actually has a real stage presence and her Ellen was a very compelling reading. Hers is a voice that’s clear and bright, not warm and sumptuous exactly, and that somehow felt just right for the dutiful Ellen, keeping her spirits up despite all the evidence. Again, I was moved to tears by some of her reflective solos. I’d love to hear her in Strauss or Mozart.
Simon Bailey as Bulstrode was very good – clear diction, solid voice, sensitive singing – he reminded me of Norman Bailey, which is the highest compliment I can offer. There were no weak links in the rest of the cast.
About the Alden production I was less keen than some of the newspaper reviews. There was nothing so distracting that it impacted on the power of the drama and music, but Peter Grimes is one of those works directors should be careful about meddling with too much. There were, for me, several issues:
I. Sets. These were big and clunky, necessitating two intervals which to my mind dissipates the drama needlessly. There was a rather effective cloud backdrop with a platform stage in various forms for outside scenes, and then for indoor scenes oppressive walls. There seemed to be some fiddly tables/platforms being shifted around in Act 1, and I found the way the pub scene worked – cosy lamplit snug, and then the back wall lifting to show the threatening crowd beyond at intervals – distracting. What was effective about the sets and the costumes was the feeling of greyness and drabness of the post war 1940s Britain Alden clearly sets the opera in (and indeed I still remember Mrs Sedley look-alikes when being taken by a great-aunt to church in Enfield in the very early 1960’s). The lighting is harsh and effective – whites and yellows, not much in the way of warmer colours – there’s little sense of the sea . The lighting also cleverly enables shadows on the outside backdrops – so that for instance when Grimes came on stage for the last scene he appeared to be communing with a larger doppelganger (a stunning stage picture though what it added to the drama I’m not sure)
2. The direction. The intention was clearly to emphasise the threat of the Borough mob, and some of the strangeness, the frustrations underlying ‘ordinary’ people’s lives, denied, and projected onto Grimes. What this for the most part, other than a dominatrix Auntie, and various escapades going on at the Act 3 party, meant was a lot of coordinated movement e.g for the lynch mob in Act 2, giving the Borough crowd a robotic or puppet -like appearance, more akin to a musical. Fair enough, in one sense but it tended to look simply and only mechanical and to undermine the concept that these are ordinary people, caring and considerate to their own, who can nevertheless be manipulated and whipped up into a frenzy of hatred against the outsider. It seems to me pretty obvious that the opera is as much about what had happened over the previous 12 years in Germany before its first performance as anything about a gay man’s reaction to public dislike of his sexuality,. While mass manipulation was obviously part of what happened in Nazi Germany, in this case the more powerful way I think for the director to handle Peter Grimes is for the Borough people to seem and act like normal individuals while behaving like a brutal mob. I thought Herheim was much better at conveying this.
In many ways the best of the evening was the chorus and orchestra. You somehow know when an orchestra is on fire, and it undoubtedly was at this performance – the strings really digging in, the brass crisp, the climaxes overwhelming – I heard details you don’t normally come across, such was the clarity of the sound the orchestra produced. The chorus, I assume augmented, was excellent, with a direct attack, rhythmically incisive in what sounds like the very tricky sea shanty in the pub, “‘old Joe has gone fishing” and simply very loud when needed.
Although I thought the Herheim production in Munich was bettter this was an exciting and moving performance with the audience showing their full throated and warm support in the curtain calls for ENO’s continued presence on the national musical scene
John's musical journey 