Britten Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh Beach

Product Description A winningly imaginative filmic interpretation of Benjamin Britten's ever-popular opera, the most successful opera of post-war Britain. The Alderbergh Festival played host to this production, with Steuart Bedford conducting the Britten-Pears Orchestra and Alan Oke, Giselle Allen and David Kempster starring as Peter, Ellen and Capt. Balstrode respectively. The performances were universally hailed by Britain's major news media outlets, including The Guardian and The Times. Review The troubled Aldeburgh fisherman Peter Grimes has rowed home at last in a unique production presented on the pebbly shores of the Suffolk village by the festival that Benjamin Britten established there in 1948. Lacking a facility large enough in the town to accommodate the large chorus and sets for the presentation of this most celebrated of Britten's stage works, Aldeburgh Music boldly proposed to celebrate the centennial of the composer's birth with "Grimes on the Beach." Compromises aside (a pre-taped orchestra and headset microphones to amplify the soloists), the weather co-operated and the risk proved well worth the effort. --The Wholenote [...] the musical execution, is so fine. The singers were performing live to, of necessity, a prerecorded orchestral soundtrack, but the results in this rhythmically demanding music are excellent [...] Britten's sea music, paired with the actual sea and sky, suffers not a bit. --Opera News, May 2014 This souvenir from Britten's centenary deserves a lasting place in the catalogue. Filmed live on Aldeburgh beach, Tim Albery's production of Peter Grimes lays the opera open to the elements and captures a windswept, emotionally engulfing performance, in which the human story is palpably at the mercy of forces beyond its control. --Gramophone