True Grimes: a gripping semi-staging of Britten’s opera

By Matthew Rye, 01 December 2019

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“Stuart Skelton... whose assumption of the title role has come to be definitive”

Reviewed at Royal Festival Hall, London on 30 November 2019

Britten, Peter Grimes (Concert performance)

Edward Gardner, Conductor

Vera Rostin Wexelsen, Director

Stuart Skelton, Peter Grimes

Erin Wall, Ellen Orford

Roderick Williams, Captain Balstrode

Susan Bickley, Auntie

Robert Murray, Bob Boles

Hanna Husáhr, First Niece

Vibeke Kristensen, Second Niece

Barnaby Rea, Hobson

James Gilchrist, Rev Horace Adams

Clive Bayley, Swallow

Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Mrs Sedley

Marcus Farnsworth, Ned Keene

Bergen Philharmonic Chorus

Edvard Grieg Choir

Musicians from the Royal Northern College of Music

Collegium Musicum of London Chamber Choir

Håkon Matti Skrede, Choirmaster / chorus director

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra

A stellar Peter Grimes in Bergen

Mark Valencia, 30th May

This Peter Grimes was a tale of two talents: the conductor and the star.

*****

Antonia Bembo’s Ercole amante wins hearts at the Opéra de Paris

David Karlin, 2nd June

Leonardo García-Alarcón's exhumation of Bembo's work proves a winner, in a hyper-quirky staging by Netia Jones with Julie Fuchs as the pick of the fine singers.

****1

Chasing the American Dream: UK premiere for Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up

Mark Pullinger, 1st June

Amy Lane directs an intimate staging of Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s 2018 chamber opera in the compact Milton Court Theatre.

****1

Longborough Festival Opera season starts slow with Orlando

Eleanor Knight, 30th May

Beth Taylor gives the lows and highs of Handel's heroics an almighty, whole-body shakedown in Sinéad O'Neill’s new staging of Handel's Orlando.

***11

Viennese splendour in Garsington’s Rosenkavalier revival

Roy Westbrook, 28th May

Bruno Ravella's splendid 2021 production of Strauss' opera of Viennese manners returns with a fine cast.

****1

Bang! Mozart’s volcano erupts in Opera Holland Park’s Così fan tutte

Peter Quantrill, 28th May

Mount Vesuvius looms over Cecilia Stinton’s compelling new production of Così fan tutte.

****1

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Matthew Rye

Matthew read music at Oxford and worked in music journalism for 30 years as a writer, critic and editor. He wrote numerous programme and CD booklet notes, spent 13 years as a Daily Telegraph critic, worked at BBC Music Magazine and was reviews editor of The Strad. He also wrote for The Wagner Journal and Opera and blogged at ferneklang.blogspot.co.uk. He was general editor of 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die (Cassell Illustrated, 2007) and was the author of a new series of eBooks, Masterpieces of Music (Erudition).