Benjamin Britten's Influence On Peter Grimes

Opera is often a medium used to express the most intense of human emotions. Although many operas have attempted to authentically convey the feelings of isolation, fear, and ostracism, few have done so at the same level as Benjamin Britten with his work, Peter Grimes. Throughout the opera, the title character, Peter Grimes, is ever-increasingly distressed, as accusations of murder stain his reputation and force him to flee from angry townspeople. By the end of the opera, Grimes is propositioned to sail himself out to see and sink his ship, and with no hopes of ever returning to life as before at the Borough, Grimes obliges. In this essay, I will be discussing how Benjamin Britten drew from his personal experiences as a homosexual man to make

Shortly before World War II, Britten had left England with his partner Peter Pears feeling discouraged and looking for work. Britten quickly garnered success with a number of commissioned pieces, but still felt unfulfilled. While in California, Britten and Pears stumbled across the poetry of George Crabbe. Grimes drew inspiration from Crabbe’s poem, “The Borough,” to adapt it into an opera and return to his roots in England. While waiting for passage to England, Britten met Serge Koussevitsky who heard Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and wondered why Britten had not yet written an opera. He soon arranged for the commission of an opera based on the Crabbe’s poem in honor of his recently deceased wife. Britten and Pears then began creating scenarios which they eventually brought to librettist Montague Slater. After nearly 18 months of intense collaboration and revisions, Britten began working on the scored in January of 1944. The score was complete in 1945, and the first performance brought Sadler’s Wells Opera Company back to its home theater after years of touring during the war. Peter Grimes gained enough acclaim that many consider it to be the first great English opera since