The Man and the Mob: "Peter Grimes" at the Bavarian State Opera
Created: 07/03/2022, 17:10
By: Markus Thiel
Theater voyeurs of a catastrophe: The village society observes Peter Grimes (Stuart Skelton) and his apprentice (Jakob Biber).
© Wilfried Hösl
How do you escape from this narrow-minded village society?
What can a mob do?
Director Stefan Herheim finds deliberately ambiguous, highly theatrical images for “Peter Grimes”.
Conductor Edward Gardner sharpens Britten's score - a performance that must be seen and heard.
Maybe everything is very different.
Perhaps the man is not a loner, not an oddball, not suspected of child abuse.
But simply strange, because he opposes the masses, who always want to have known everything.
An alternative, certainly contestable possibility of existence, possibly even a door opener out of this narrow-minded village life.
This is one of the reasons why Silke Bauer's grandiose stage keeps expanding and stretching, turning from a squat theater hall into a wooden cathedral.
And a curtain likes to open, revealing the shimmering sea, the starry sky – or Peter Grimes' fateful journey.
Definitely, that's never great art, especially not Benjamin Britten's debut opera, which directors like to narrow down to a sugar daddy perversion.
Stefan Herheim, who sometimes thinks and shows more than is good for a production, lets a lot flow together and openly here too.
But the Norwegian wasn't that stringent, that focused for a long time.
It is a masterpiece that he succeeds in on his late debut at the Bavarian State Opera.
A performance that also has to stand up to the reality outside: As is well known, Omikron prevented the original premiere date.
At the second attempt, Herheim himself was ill and had to watch everything on the live stream.
Before the first bar, Britten then had a speech by director Serge Dorny, who invoked European values against the war - and then had this reinforced by the European anthem, Beethoven's "joyful theme".
A premiere of great craftsmanship
What happened afterwards: an evening that takes on the main character in its repeatedly broken realism.
And that's not the title hero, but the choir.
Herheim shows him in several forms.
As a force of nature, when the singers rush in through the door, swaying back and forth like the stormy sea.
As a mob condemning with pointing fingers against Grimes and (with the room lights on) against us.
As a society, walking through the front lines between the sexes.
And as a collection of individuals hatched with a few director's strokes.
Because apart from the ambiguous, three-fold concept: the evening also impresses with its theatricality, with a quality of craftsmanship that has not been experienced here for a long time.
Starting with the subtle use of light, the awareness of stage balance and the shifting of dramatic force fields to the immense musicality.
The scenic events and the score are closely intertwined.
This does not duplicate each other, but provides food for thought and real added value.
And the fact that the premiere sags a bit after the break can also be blamed on Britten, for whom the final catastrophe takes a long run.
The theater cipher that Herheim likes to work with also works here.
This Brettlbühne is not only a meeting place and focal point for the village community.
It becomes the site of voyeurism as the crowd indulges in Grimes' fate like a thriller - without even attempting integration or empathy.
And yet Herheim does not condemn, but wants to explain.
They all become sympathizers.
Ellen Orford, sung by Rachel Willis-Sørensen with soulful tones that she develops from a rich middle register.
Also Balstrode, who with Iain Paterson is not only a gnarly captain, but – in the vocal nuances – also someone who understands and despairs.
Plus Auntie, who lets Claudia Mahnke shimmer between bizarreness and a dark angel.
Or Ned Keene
Britten's music is not intoxication here, but sharp-edged relief
The sea may be everything that Britten refers to musically: With conductor Edward Gardner and the Bavarian State Orchestra, this does not mean intoxication, but sharp-edged relief.
How Gardner gives contours to the expansive composition, how he profiles layers, even softening them, how he instinctively uses the dramatic without betraying anything about the effect, how he keeps close contact with everyone, that is the musical event of this production.
As if someone had additionally adjusted a lens and inserted a super lens, the two-and-a-half-hour Gardner sounds so crystal clear.
Then there is the great precision.
Above all, the State Opera Choir, musically and finally also scenically challenged, is growing far beyond itself.
Until that moment when everything goes blank and only Grimes is left on stage.
A vulnerable and injured bull sung and played by Stuart Skelton as Border Gang.
He lets his beautiful heroic tenor shine in broken colors – and also (deliberately?) strenuous music.
Only at the end, when Grimes is dressed like his apprentice, does it become clear: there is something else, a devastating trauma.
Herheim shows this solo moment as a grandiose reminiscence of bel canto opera, as the complete loneliness of an outcast.
Commonly and superficially, something like this is interpreted as a "mad scene".
Yet it signals much more, much greater things: a failure in itself and in the world.
Internet recording
at staatsoper.tv.