We are like islands in a stormy sea
A sea that’s beautiful and terrifying, that truly reflects the storms in the human soul and rules the lives of those who are connected with it. People like the fisherman Peter Grimes, who tries in vain to change his life but is constantly rejected by the other inhabitants of his fishing village due to his character. The situation is exacerbated by the death of his apprentice, which raises a number of questions. Was it really an accident or was Grimes directly involved in it? Most people in Borough don’t believe Grimes is innocent, and so the unfortunate death of another apprentice thus inevitably leads to tragedy. The English poet George Crabbe and the composer Benjamin Britten loved the sea. Both of them grew up on the coast of Suffolk, and the life stories of people from a fishing settlement inspired Crabbe to create the collection of poems from which Britten drew the story for his first opera, Peter Grimes. He captured not only the spirit of the town and its diverse community, but also and mainly his beloved sea, to which the main character of Peter Grimes is strongly tied. He depicted it through four beautiful orchestral interludes that capture the rising of the sun, or the reflection of moonlight on the water surface. Britten´s Peter Grimes had its Czechoslovak premiere in Brno in June 1947, and now it is returning after almost 75 years as another project by the great team of conductor Marko Ivanović, David Radok and soprano Jana Šrejma Kačírková after their successful production of Juliette / The Human Voice. The Swedish tenor Joachim Bäcksträm appears in the title role.
Premiere: 9th October 2021 at the Janáček Theatre
