Peter Grimes a raging, powerful, defiant start to the new ENO season

Gwyn Hughes Jones (Peter Grimes)

English National Opera Chorus

Christine Rice (Auntie)

Rudy Williams (John) and Elizabeth Llewellyn (Ellen)

Alex Otterburn (Ned), Ava Dodd and Cleo Lee-McGowan (Nieces) and John Findon (Bob Boles)

By Stephen Pritchard, 22 September 2023

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“so unkempt and unwashed you can almost smell the fish on him”

Reviewed at The London Coliseum, London on 21 September 2023

Britten, Peter Grimes

English National Opera

Martyn Brabbins, Conductor

David Alden, Director

Paul Steinberg, Set Designer

Brigitte Reiffenstuel, Costume Designer

Adam Silverman, Lighting Designer

English National Opera Orchestra

English National Opera Chorus

Gwyn Hughes Jones, Peter Grimes

Elizabeth Llewellyn, Ellen Orford

Simon Bailey, Captain Balstrode

Christine Rice, Auntie

John Findon, Bob Boles

Cleo Lee-McGowan, First Niece

Ava Dodd, Second Niece

David Soar, Hobson

Ronald Samm, Rev Horace Adams

Clive Bayley, Swallow

Anne-Marie Owens, Mrs Sedley

Alex Otterburn, Ned Keene

ENO’s Mahagonny: biting, bleak, brilliantly executed satire

David Karlin, 16th February

Never has Brecht and Weill’s satire on the inhumanity of man to man been render with such utter darkness; Simon O’Neill heads up a superb cast.

*****

Taken for a ride: an energetic revival of Così fan tutte at ENO

Dominic Lowe, 6th February

English National Opera's revival of Phelim McDermott’s popular production is a blend of spectacle with some first-class singing, with Lucy Crowe emphasising her Mozartian credentials.

****1

Cocteau-esque camp: Alden’s Partenope returns to ENO

Mark Valencia, 20th November

Christopher Alden’s Olivier Award-winning production of Handel’s Partenope returns to the Coliseum, but it's the singing that earns the plaudits.

****1

Dead Man Walking at English National Opera: a superb execution

David Karlin, 1st November

Anneliese Miskimmon's ENO production of Jake Heggie and Terence McNally's tale of crime, repentance, compassion and redemption compels from start to finish.

*****

Comedy falls flat in ENO's season opening Cinderella

Mark Valencia, 27th September

Julia Burbach and her designer, Herbert Murauer, are defeated by the wide canyons of the Coliseum stage in their modern-dress Cinderella.

**111

ENO gives Thea Musgrave's Mary, Queen of Scots a worthy performance

Nick Boston, 15th February

Musgrave's powerful depiction of a powerful woman at the mercy of male manipulation receives a strong staging from at ENO.

****1

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Stephen Pritchard

Stephen Pritchard began singing as a treble at the age of eight and progressed to become a tenor in Portsmouth Cathedral Choir, the Gibbons Consort and now the English Chamber Choir. Writing about music has been at the core of his 40-year career in journalism, chiefly at the Observer. He has been known to play a pretty mean jazz double bass.