Peter Grimes

In the organizer's words:

"The more wicked the society, the more wicked the individual"

Opera in three acts and prologue op. 33 / Libretto by Montagu Slater based on a poem by George Crabbe / In English original language with German surtitles

Crime scene: coastal town. The 16-year-old boy's apprentice William Spode is dead. He died mysteriously on board the "Boy Billy" on the evening of the 26th. Fisherman Peter Grimes has to stand his ground in court. He is considered a gruff, stubborn and brutal character, an outsider, and has neither a wife nor a child. He works hard, partly, as he claims, to be able to marry Ellen Orford one day. But does that make him a perpetrator? The villagers have long since passed their verdict: guilty. What really happened? And why does Grimes take a boy to himself again despite everything? Even Ellen and old Captain Balstrode fight against their doubts when the village begins to hunt Peter Grimes and another boy is killed ...

"The more evil the society, the more evil the individual" - a thesis that occupied Benjamin Britten throughout his life. With Peter Grimes in 1945, he not only achieved his breakthrough as an opera composer, but also one of the greatest works of music theater of the 20th century. George Crabbe's poem The Borough (1810) inspired him to write the plot of his exciting first work, in which the composer placed a great deal of personal significance: the relationship to his home on the coast of England, to his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, and to the sea, which comes to life, for better or for worse, above all in the music.