Continuing the theme of all Grimes, all the time… The only commercially available recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes with Stuart Skelton in the title role is a Chandos SACD recorded in Bergen in 2019 with Edward Gardner conducting and it’s really good.  These two though had been captured on video in 2015 in a David Alden production at ENO.  That had formed part of the ENO Live series of cinema transmissions but it was rebroadcast in August last year on Sky Arts in the UK.  That version (at least my copy) is 720p video and AAC 2 channel 48kHz audio; so not quite Blu-ray standard but very tolerable.

Alden’s production appears to be set in the late 1940s and it’s quite abstract; mostly just trestle tables and a capstan arranged in various ways.  It’s also a bit weird.  Ned Keene (Leigh Melrose) seems to be some sort of drug addict (which I suppose makes sense) but it’s really Auntie and her nieces who scoop the weirdness pot.  Auntie is Rebecca de Pont Davies who is quite striking looking to begin with but in a loud striped trouser suit and fur coat and carrying a riding crop she’s something else.  In the “dance” scene she’s also wearing a boar’s head!  The nieces; Rhian Lois and Mary Bevan, are played almost as automata; whether it’s in school uniforms carrying weird dolls or in a sailor suit or battle dress they dance together in a weirdly jerky fashion.  The apprentice too is played as if he’s seriously autistic, or scared out of his wits, or both.  The Act 3 dance is also a bit odd.  Not just Auntie and the nieces but Swallow in a pink skirt!

To be honest though those are the weird elements and otherwise it’s mostly quite conventional.  Skelton is on the dreamy end of the Grimes spectrum which suits his rather beautiful voice but he’s big and burly enough to convince in the nastier moments.  The big lyrical moments; :What harbour shelters peace” and “Now the Great Bear and Pleiades” are gorgeous.  There’s a fine, rather intellectual Balstrode, in Iain Paterson and Elza van den Heever acts brilliantly as Ellen Orford.  I don’t think I’ve seen an Ellen bring out that “kindness” is just another form of non-conformity that the Borough deprecates as well as she.  Her singing is excellent too.  One might ask for a slightly sweeter tone in some of the very high passages but I’d say that about almost everyone who has sung the role.

Felicity Palmer is rather good as the laudanum addled “sleuth” Mrs. Sedley.  Timothy Robinson, as Horace Adams, and Matthew Best, as Swallow, are convincing oldsters and Michael Colvin is an excellent Bob Boles; drunk or sober.  Matthew Treviño is a more personable Carter Hobson than most.  As in many ENO productions the chorus plays a key role.  Here they are truly menacing, especially in Act 3 where they turn into a Union Flag waving lynch mob.  Gardner conducts with drama and flair especially in the Sea Interludes which are played “bare”; no visual interest injected here.  It’s really a very fine ensemble performance built around one of the best interpreters of the title role.

Andy Morahan directed for video.  It’s mostly OK but I don’t really get the point of shots from behind the action pointing to the audience, which one can’t actually see because the auditorium is dark.  Is it meant to imply “We are all the Borough”?  That apart it’s OK and the picture and sound are very acceptable.  My copy has hard coded English sub-titles.

I have no idea how one might get hold of a copy of this.  I do not believe it’s ever had a commercial video disk release but if you do have a way to get a copy I’d recommend it for some fine performances and a production which, if sometimes weird, is never boring.