Is London’s Peter Grimes greater than Vienna’s?

Allen says:

“This was the last night but the good news is that Covent Garden has filmed it”

Good news indeed.

Larry L. Lash says:

I sincerely look forward to the opportunity to hear Allan Clayton in the role.

It is unfortunate Mr Kerr attended the last performance of the run at Wiener Staatsoper.

A dear friend, who chooses to keep silent when he could easily copy the harsh words being spoken/written around him, saw Christine Mielitz’s production when it was new, in 1996. Since then, it has been his benchmark for bad productions.

“What did you think, Robert?” “Well, it wasn’t as bad as ‘Peter Grimes’”.

He returned to it in January. Among his newfound observations was one that also puzzled me: a bevy of debutants, in white gowns accompanied by young men in tuxedos, suddenly rush onto the stage: in the middle of the chorus “Him who despises us, we’ll destroy”!

Personally, I find it abominable. It is a miracle that Kaufmann, Davidsen, Terfel, and the rest of the cast and chorus managed to pull off what they did. I also found Kaufmann less interested in forming a character as the run of five performances progressed.

You see, I attended three of them.

Before I am attacked and discredited as a Kaufmann fanatic, I wish to clarify.

When tickets became available, I decided to attend one performance, in the middle of the run, in the middle of the house, in a middle-priced seat. Later, Mr Lebrecht asked if I could review the opening, so I purchased a seat in the last row of the uppermost gallery. Still later, a friend from New York visited; she had purchased two seats in the front row centre for the final performance; when her intended guest had to leave on a business trip, she invited me at the last minute.

First, let me clarify that for at least three of the performances, due to a COVID outbreak in the chorus, members of the excellent and versatile Arnold Schoenberg Chor (which operates as the house chorus at Theater an der Wien) filled in, as they has just performed the work in November. Bogdan Roščić announced this before the curtain at the third performance; he did not at the final performance, even though they were onstage.

Apparently, COVID was not kept to the chorus. On 8 February, two of the lesser roles were sung be last-minute replacements, as well as the male child who played Grimes’ apprentice, who has a lot of stage-time in this production.

Things started to go noticeably wrong when the replacement Hobson walked offstage toward the end of act two, scene one – I only noticed this when Hobson’s drum solo was played – from the wings – on the beats indicated in the score, a feat which had eluded the fellow who played the part at the earlier performances.

In the following scene in which Grimes’ apprentice falls to its death, the little girl who was filling in was helped down from a precarious position on a rope ladder up the side of the proscenium by Kaufmann, and she then disappeared, leaving Kaufmann to improvise the rest of the scene. The posse which appears at Grimes’ hut with the hope of trapping him was curiously undermanned and unfocused, so much so that Simone Young began to look up at the company loge for some indication that the performance needed to be halted.

In the unusually long pause between the second and third acts, Maestra Young and members of the orchestra all looked up, as if awaiting instructions. When the green light flashed on her podium desk, she took a deep breath and launched into what is know as the third “Sea Interlude”.

The curtain barely rose on a man in contemporary street clothes wearing an FFP2 mask rushed across the stage, leading on a group of choristers and/or supernumeraries, not all of whom were in costume for this production.

What followed was utter chaos. A poorly sung, underwhelmed chorus, followed by an improvised “mad scene”, followed by the curtain never quite going up on the final moments (the black scrim curtain never rose, as was scheduled).

In Mielitz’s ill-conceived production, Grimes sings his “mad scene” to the corpse of his apprentice and lugs it off over his shoulder at his exit; Kaufmann was left to again improvise, with only a black sack laying centre-stage.

I later learned that the replacements for Ned Keene and Hobson had not been rehearsed, which explains their curious exits and entries (Hobson appeared at the last possible moment). The little girl substituting as the apprentice had been instructed only as far as the beginning of act two scene two: she simply went home (credit for the role is missing for this performance on Wiener Staatsoper’s online archives; it is included for all other performances).

Apparently COVID was discovered among the cast/chorus mid-performance. More members of the Schoenberg Chor were added last minute, as other members of the Wiener Staatsopernchor, in the house rehearsing other operas, were simply thrown onstage. I was told that the Schoenberg Chor had received more rehearsals than the in-house chorus.

Save for the professionalism shown by Kaufmann, Davidsen, and Terfel, the third act was even more chaotic than the barbaric music written for the chorus by Britten. Kudos as well to Maestra Young for holding things together as well as she did.

It boils down to a decision by management to keep going at any cost, a decision more recently reflected in last Sunday’s Oscar Awards.

In all, I ask Mr Kerr to take this into consideration. One cannot accurately judge the performances of three lead singers when they are denied the onstage company of well-rehearsed colleagues, and a competent, knowledgeable, prepared stage manager.

Kenneth says:

Still forgetting to mention the Grimes from Theater an der Wien with the ORF Radiosymphonieorchester and the Arnold Schoenberg Chor under Thomas Guggeis , which was, apart from the soloists, far superior in every respect than the Staatsoper!