The Classical Music Book

291

The soprano Joan Cross plays

the schoolmistress, Peter Pears is

Peter Grimes (center), and Leonard

Thompson is the apprentice in the

original 1945 production of the opera.

the headquarters for opera and

ballet (the Covent Garden Opera

Company, later the Royal Opera,

was not founded until 1946).

Britten felt passionately that his

country should have a permanent

national opera company and

believed the Sadler’s Wells Opera

Company, which later became

English National Opera, was a

good first step.

Inspiration for Grimes

During World War II, Britten and his

partner, the tenor Peter Pears—a

fellow pacifist—spent three years

in America. While there, Britten

read George Crabbe’s poem The

Borough, published in 1810, in

which Crabbe devotes a whole

section to the villain Peter Grimes,

a murderous outcast, who is hunted

down by his community. The long

poem depicts the people of the

Suffolk town of Aldeburgh, on

England’s east coast, and describes

the local flat landscape, the marshy

terrain, the stony beaches, and the

suck and surge of the waves. It

moved Britten so deeply that not

only did he decide to use the story

of Peter Grimes as the subject for

opera, but he also determined to

return to his native Suffolk.

In spite of the danger and

difficulties of crossing the Atlantic

in wartime, he and Peter Pears

traveled to England on a cargo

vessel, the Axel Johnson. During

the 19-day sea journey, they worked

together on the libretto for the new

project, surrounded by what Peter

Pears described as “callous, foul-

mouthed, witless recruits for

company.” Such a setting for the

beginnings of Britten’s first serious

opera was apt; the sea would form a

haunting backdrop in Peter Grimes.

Back home in Suffolk, Britten

worked further on the libretto

with the writer Montagu Slater.

Britten, a deeply sensitive man,

wanted to explore the character

of Crabbe’s murderous outcast.

Britten felt himself to be an outsider

in society and not only because of

his pacifism. He had first met Peter

Pears in 1937, and the two suffered ❯❯

See also: Dido and Aeneas 72–77 ■ Tosca 194 –197 ■ Peer Gynt 208–209 ■

The Wreckers 232–239 ■ A Child of Our Time 284–285

MODERN 1900 –1950

I wanted to express

my awareness of the

perpetual struggle of men

and women whose livelihood

depends on the sea.

Benjamin Britten Benjamin Britten

Born in Lowestoft, England, in

1913, Britten played the piano

and composed from an early

age, studying with the

composer and violinist Frank

Bridge in his teens. In 1930, he

won a scholarship to London’s

Royal College of Music.

From 1939 to 1942, Britten

and the tenor Peter Pears lived

in America. On their return

to London, Pears joined the

Sadler’s Wells Opera Company,

whose theatre premiered Peter

Grimes, in 1945. The success

of the opera excited interest

in every new work by Britten.

Britten and Pears formed

the English Opera Group in

1947 and in 1948 launched the

Aldeburgh Festival. In 1962,

Britten’s War Requiem was

premiered in the newly rebuilt

Coventry Cathedral. Britten

was made a life peer in 1976,

a few months before he died

of heart failure. He was the

first composer or musician to

be made a member of Britain’s

House of Lords.

Other key works

1946 The Young Person’s

Guide to the Orchestra

1951 Billy Budd

1961 War Requiem

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