A half-naked corpse on an empty stage. Some children find it and a group gathers to gawp, all without words or music. Who was this? How did he die? Did he belong to this community? What of the silence: speechless astonishment, reverence, secrecy or something more macabre?

This brilliantly conceived prelude to Britten’s elementally powerful Peter Grimes (1945) is the invention of the production’s original director Phyllida Lloyd. In this touring version, Opera North’s revival directors, Karolina Sofulak and Tim Claydon, retain Lloyd’s devastating vision from 2006.

The corpse was (or will be) Peter Grimes, a rough man-mountainous misfit, quick to violence. His previous apprentice died in ‘accidental circumstances’ and there is town gossip. Peter wants respectability and sings of marrying the schoolmistress Ellen Orford (a strong performance from Philippa Boyle). John Findon triumphs utterly as Peter. There is a lyrical sweetness in his high tenor voice for the early unaccompanied duet with Ellen (The truth – the pity), even if the duet’s conclusion (Here is a friend) can’t persuade us that they’re on the same page romantically. Findon’s complex performance never loses sight of Peter’s psychological blackness too, or his rough physicality. Peter can also sound like a visionary, though his lyrical aria Now the Great Bear and Pleiades alienates the locals who reject him for being drunk or mad.

Disapproving of child labour is right, yet its chief critic is Bob Boles (Stuart Jackson), a comically tedious Methodist. Busybody Mrs Sedley (Claire Pascoe) clutches her moral pearls while addicted to laudanum, obtained from drug dealer Ned (Johannes Moore, a strong young baritone with real stage presence). ‘Auntie’ (Hilary Summers) is a blousy landlady whose pub is a community hub, yet she always has an eye on her takings, and her ‘nieces’ (Nazan Fikrat and Ava Dodd) are popular prostitutes. The Borough reeks of hypocrisy, greed, lust and suspicion but perhaps no more than any other. These soloists, backed by the vigorous Opera North chorus, forcefully sing defiance at a sea storm. As a rampaging mob they are terrifying. When Peter’s new apprentice falls to his death, things turn nastier. Findon commands the stage in Peter’s final solo, a chillingly mad scene from an ostracised man in a state of mental collapse.

Garry Walker’s orchestra gets full rein in the expressive ‘interludes’ throughout the drama (four of these interludes are of course a popular part of the orchestral canon). There are also moments of exceptional delicacy, and some of the playing in the quieter moments is tenderly fragile. Antony Ward’s designs are bare: a huge net, hauled aloft, encloses the shoal-like townspeople while wooden pallets form screens or walls. Aside from this, we have a bare stage with an impressionistically painted maritime backcloth. Ben Jacobs’ lighting is sometimes moodily atmospheric, more often harshly expressionistic, as the grim drama unfolds.

After Peter’s death, normality in the Borough resumes. The demon has been exorcised, ranks have closed. After the orchestra stops playing, the townsfolk attend to their net, the only sound its gentle rustle and the haunting rhythmic shuffle of their feet, like seawater breaking on a shingle beach. This conspiracy of silence lasts for the longest time. Memory of the catastrophe has been suppressed, though, with no obvious catharsis, we might wonder who the Borough’s next monster will be.

I’ve never heard a longer pause before the applause. A great production of one of the greatest operas.

By Andrew Moor, Opera Correspondent

Main image by James Glossop

 

Opera North’s Peter Grimes is touring until March 20, 2026. For more information, click here.