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Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes

Prologue: "Peter Grimes"

Prologue: "You sailed you boat round the coast"

Prologue: "Peter Grimes, I here advise you"

Prologue: "The truth – the pity – and the truth"

Interlude I

I, 1: "Oh, hang at open doors"

I, 1: "Good morning, good morning!"

I, 1: "Hi! Give us a hand!"

I, 1: "I’ll have to go from pub to pub"

I, 1: "Let her among you without fault"

I, 1: "Look! The storm cone!"

I, 1: "And do you prefer the storm"

I, 1: "They listen to money"

I, 1: "What harbor shelters peace"

Interlude II

I, 2: "Past time to close"

I, 2: "Loud man"

I, 2: "There’s been a landslide up the coast"

I, 2: "Pub conversation should depend"

I, 2: "Have you heard the cliff is down"

I, 2: "Now the Great Bear and Pleiades"

I, 2: "For peace sake"

I, 2: "The bridge is down"

Interlude III

II, 1: "Glitter of waves"

II, 1: "Child you’re not too young"

II, 1: "This unrelenting work"

II, 1: "Fool to let it come to this"

II, 1: "People… No! I will speak!"

II, 1: "We planned that their lives"

II, 1: "Shall we go and see Grimes in his hut?"

II, 1: "From the gutter"

Interlude IV

II, 2: "Go there"

II, 2: "They listen to money"

II, 2: "Now! Now!"

II, 2: "Peter Grimes"

Interlude V

III, 1: "Assign your prettiness to me"

III, 1: "Mr. Keene"

III, 1: "Murder most foul it is"

III, 1: "Come along, Doctor"

III, 1: "Embroidery in childhood was"

III, 1: "Mr. Swallow"

III, 1: "Who holds himself apart"

Interlude VI

III, 2: "Grimes!"

III, 2: "Peter, we’ve come to take you home"

III, 2: "To those who pass the Borough"

Britten's Peter Grimes

Margaret Williams (stage director), Steuart Bedford (conductor) – With Alan Oke (Peter Grimes) and Giselle Allen (Ellen Orford) – Aldeburgh Festival

Opera
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Cast

Tim Albery — Stage director

Leslie Travers — Set and costume design

Lucy Carter — Lighting

Alan Oke — Peter Grimes

Giselle Allen — Ellen Orford

David Kempster — Captain Balstrode

Gaynor Keeble — Auntie

Program notes

Discover "the most talked about event of the summer”: the film Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh Beach, shown in more than 90 cinemas across the UK during Autumn 2013.

In June 2013, film maker Margaret Williams immortalized Tim Albery’s exceptional staging of the Britten’s opera on the beach in Aldeburgh, the city in which the opera’s story is set. Filmed during three extraordinary performances during the Aldeburgh Festival, Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh Beach is the film interpretation of Britten’s Peter Grimes, the most successful opera of post-war Britain.

Based on George Crabbe’s 1810 poem "The Borough", Britten’s powerful and masterful evocation of the North Sea in all its moods has become inextricably linked with the Aldeburgh that was home to Crabbe in the late eighteenth century and Britten in the twentieth, and where both poem and opera were written.

Conceived of and hosted by the Aldeburgh Festival, the performances of Peter Grimes were directed by Tim Albery, who placed the audience on the beach, watching the story unfold as dusk falls over the sea. The cast and chorus, with Alan Oke in the eponymous role of Peter Grimes, Giselle Allen as Ellen Orford, and David Kempster as Captain Balstrode, sing live with amplification, while the Britten-Pears Orchestra under the baton of Britten-expert Steuart Bedford is pre-recorded.

Photo : © Photo: Aldeburgh Music

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