Video streamed event and on demand: Peter Grimes

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?

Aldeburgh, a small fishing village in Suffolk on the east coast of England, is where composer Benjamin Britten was born and spent most of his life. Aldeburgh was also where poet George Crabbe lived and worked, writing in 1820 a poem The Borough whose story, about a violent recluse ostracised by the Aldeburgh fishing community, captivated the young Britten. Peter Grimes premiered in Sadler’s Wells theatre London in 1945 to ecstatic reviews and remains probably the most popular of Britten's operas. Peter Grimes is particularly well known for its powerful choral scenes, which the Chorus of the Finnish National Opera will surely relish in this production streamed live from Helsinki. Of it, director David Radok says, ‘Even if an individual has morals, a mob does not. A mob is controlled by a collective unconscious, the suppressed aggression of which is continuously looking for a target. A certain group or individual will always provide an outlet for it. This is how the greatest tragedies in human history have always emerged.’