The town is dependent on the sea, fishing is how they make their living, but it is a dangerous bargain: they live by the sea and frequently die by it too, as we see with Grimess successive apprentices. Shortly after the premiere, Britten had expressed a wish that the occasion would transcend Sadler's Wells or even himself as an omen for the future of English opera and hoped that others would take the plunge. Well, it was, but fortunately it was of the right kind.. "Now the Great Bear", his startling Act II aria, reveals the wounded man beneath the menacing facade. Christopher Isherwood was their first choice as librettist; when he declined, they turned to the left-wing writer Montagu Slater, with whom Britten had previously collaborated in the thirties, writing incidental music for two of his plays. When the mob reaches the hut Grimes and the apprentice are not to be found, so they disperse, curious and suspicious. He too wishes to marry her if he can make money, but it is essentially a social contract, not a loving one (though as with everything in this opera, there is plenty of ambiguity). He is followed by Grimes himself: it is as if the eye of the storm has entered the room. At the beginning, Peter is in front of a coroner's inquest after his apprentice has died at sea. Britten would return more overtly to pacifist themes later in his life culminating in his great War Requiem for the rededication of Coventry Cathedral. He spent the first part of the war in the USA away from the conflict and then applied for official conscientious objector status upon his return to Britain. It was first performed in 1945. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual. It is generally thought to be the most important British opera of the 20th century. While an early critic slammed Britten for an absence of melody, that's true only from the traditional perspective of extended baroque, classical and romantic structural development and reflects more a general distaste for modern music than a specific reproach of Britten; indeed, the opera is full of fleeting thematic fragments that constantly tantalize without overstaying their welcome (and the few that do repeat incessantly, as when the crowd's anger rises to frenzy "Grimes is at his exercise" are intended to grate). Grimes stays out, and alone with Balstrode confesses his ambitions: to make his fortune with a "good catch", buy a good home and marry Ellen Orford. She encourages the boy to talk about himself, but he says nothing. Aldeburgh is located in Suffolk on a gravelly patch of land between the River Alde and the North Sea. Britten: "The only thing which moves me about singing is that the voice is something that comes out naturally from personality.
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peter grimes character analysis