Peter grimes

a premier premiere

From its auspicious premiere in 1945, the remarkable Peter Grimes has weathered critics, audiences and the test of time

With its haunting, yet appealing music and profound psychological insight, Britten’s tale of the outcast fisherman Peter grimes has become the most performed British opera in the international repertoire, and arguably the most important piece of the 20th century.

The decision to commission a premiere opera for the post-World War II re-opening of the Sadlers Wells, an English opera company, was a bold one. Bold because there was no tradition of opera composition in England, little appetite for audiences wanting to see contemporary opera and the opera chosen was by a young, unknown composer named Benjamin Britten. yet the faith of Artistic Director Joan Cross in this new opera Peter Grimes carried the project through a challenging rehearsal period and to a historical opening night in 1945. Cross later recalled that the music “made a terrific impression” and that the storm music “simply knocked you over.”

Esteemed British musician Imogen Holst wrote with excitement of the premiere performance:

“No one in the audience that night will ever forget the excitement of that evening. Here at last was a real English opera that was going to live side by side with any of the great operas of the world. The drama in the music was utterly compelling from the first note to the last. The story moved swiftly and the singers sang memorable tunes that could be taken home and whistled. The music stretched beyond the boxed-in sides of the stage, and when the hostile crowds in the wings sang out “Peter Grimes!”, their voices sounded as if they were coming from far along the coast. In the fog of a terrible man-hunt, the poor demented fisherman seemed to grow in stature until he was no longer a separate individual...he was bearing the burden of all those other outcasts who are rejected by their law-abiding neighbours because they are different from other people. When the tragedy had reached its quiet end and the opera was over, the listeners knew they had been hearing a masterpiece, and that nothing like this had ever happened before in English music. They stood up and shouted.”

With our performances of Peter Grimes during the summer of 2013, directed by kristine McIntyre, who has led our acclaimed productions of La Bohème (2011) and Eugene Onegin (2012), Des Moines Metro Opera will join the year-long worldwide celebration of Benjamin Britten’s centenary. Britten died in 1976 and in retrospect over his long compositional career, he can safely be called the most important and most performed opera composer of the 20th century. •

peTer grimeS Benjamin Britten

June 22 | July 2 | July 5 | July 13 7:30pm June 30 2:00pm

Sinead Mulhern Todd Thomas eLLen orFord capTain BaLSTrode

complete cast and production information at desmoinesmetroopera.org

Honeywell upon Stratford

Peter Grimes' star tenor talks about tackling the title role for the first time

“I started as an actor,” says Roger Honeywell, 45, who grew up in Toronto but lives in Stratford now, “and I love intimate theaters. The Stratford theater has a great festival with a thrust stage and you can be inches from audience members. Literally they are upon you and that’s fantastic. It gives you such focus and concentration that you can feel your effect on the audience. They are a part of the performance.” Since appearing in Henry V, The Merchant of Venice and any number of other productions for the Stratford Festival, Honeywell has become one of north America’s most exciting tenors and finest singing actors in opera today. Though he has plenty of Shakespeare experience, audiences won’t see Honeywell in Romeo and Juliet this summer. He’s singing the title role in Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, an opera by another staple of England’s artistic legacy.

“It’s a masterpiece,” Honeywell says of Grimes. “It’s one of the greatest 20th century operas; there are no comparisons to it. Certainly for the tenor repertoire, this is one of the major highlights.” It’s also a role that Honeywell has never sung before. Honeywell’s remarkable career has taken him all over the world and encompasses many roles, including Pinkerton with Fort Worth Opera, Don José with Pittsburgh Opera, and Cavaradossi for Florida grand Opera, Portland Opera and Fort Worth. He recently appeared at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera and Opéra de Montréal in roles as varied as La Bohème’s Rodolfo, The Flying Dutchman’s Erik and James nolan in Doctor Atomic, but he’s never sung Peter Grimes.

“grimes is so complex. you can take him in so many directions and they are all correct,” he says of Britten’s anti-hero. “I’m going to try to make him as psychological and real as possible. I spend a lot of time asking, 'Where did things go wrong for him? Why is his life so tragic?' I can’t say definitively until rehearsals, but that's part of the process. Even from performance to performance, I’ll be trying to find the truth in it, the beauty in it and the universality.”

Before those performances he’ll have to prepare, which means pouring over the libretto. “The first thing I do is spend time reading it,” Honeywell says. "I don’t sing it, I just read it, looking for keys into my character. I look for what other characters say about my character and what he says about himself and then try to bridge the two.” Honeywell will be working a lot with stage director kristine McIntyre even before either arrive in Indianola to work on characterization. He has also reached out to a few other famous grimeses for inspiration. “One of my favorite singers and a fellow Canadian, Jon Vickers, is pretty much the standard bearer for the role, and I’ve listened to his recording hundreds of times, and other recordings, like my friend Anthony Dean griffey’s,” Honeywell says. “However, griffey told me the other night in Chicago to stop listening to recordings because you may try to force your vocal interpretation into a place that isn't necessarily right.”

Honeywell and McIntyre, along with Maestro neely, will work together to fine-tune Honeywell’s portrayal, specifically created for the unique theater at Des Moines Metro Opera. With such an intimate space, Honeywell will have to rely on his non-singing acting chops. "For a role like this, acting is key,” he says. “It’s a difficult thing; you have to have a very good understanding of your technique and stagecraft. you need to be able to go farther than just the musical structure. It speaks on a different level.” •