Polish National Opera presents Peter Grimes, Britten, now streaming on OperaVision. Britten’s brillant early opera about a reclusive fisherman who finds himself at odds with this local community. The new production from Warsaw is directed by Mariusz Treliński and conducted by Michał Klauza. Tenor Peter Wedd plays the complex protagonist, alongside soprano Cornelia Beskow as the empathetic Ellen Orford and baritone Krzysztof Szumański as the retired captain Balstrode, whose condemnation seals Grimes’s fate.
Peter Grimes lives from fishing. Raw and recluse, he finds himself at odds with the local community who accuse him of brutality towards his young apprentices and blames him for the death of one of them. A few friends stand up for him – Ellen Orford, a widow whom he wants to marry, Balstrode a retired sea captain, and an apothecary Ned Keene – but Grimes remains a mysterious figure. What really happened to his missing apprentice, and was he involved?
