PETER GRIMES

OPÉRA NATIONAL DU CAPITOLE, Place du Capitole

But when Grimes takes on a new apprentice, suspicion is rekindled, then rumor, then the mob. Between stormy skies and the tides of conscience, a man faces the verdict of a community that has already spoken. In 1941, exiled in California, Benjamin Britten discovers The Borough, the long poem by George Crabbe. Homesickness overwhelms him – and with it, the revelation of a subject for an opera. For Crabbe depicts a genuine comic drama of humanity: a vain judge, a crafty landlady, a hypocritical pastor, a gossip-hungry town, a troubled apothecary – as many faces as Britten and his librettist Mont…