Britten's Peter Grimes
Margaret Williams (stage director), Steuart Bedford (conductor) – With Alan Oke (Peter Grimes) and Giselle Allen (Ellen Orford) – Aldeburgh Festival
Thank you for your understanding.
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
Robert Murray — Bob Boles
Henry Waddington — Swallow
Catherine Wyn-Rogers — Mrs Sedley
Christopher Gillett — Rev. Horace Adams
Charles Rice — Ned Keene, apothecary and quack
Stephen Richardson — Hobson, carrier
Simon Reid — Dr. Crabbe
Fleetwood Daniels — Boy
Chorus of Opera North
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
