7 days to the Peter Grimes premiere!

Peter Grimes played a key role in Donald Palumbo’s life. Early in his career, the Met’s chorus master was hired by the Dallas Opera to work on Britten’s score. “They needed someone to do it because their chorus master was an Italian who spoke ten words of English,” Palumbo recalls, coming from a Grimes rehearsal in List Hall, just across the hallway from his Met office. “But he turned out to be one of the greatest chorus masters of the 20th century, Roberto Benaglio. At the time, he had retired from La Scala and was doing the Dallas job because he was friends with the music director. So I came into contact with this man, and that basically changed my life.”

Today, Palumbo is teaching Grimes to the Met chorus. In the story of the opera, the chorus almost takes on the identity of a character of its own, as the conductor points out. “Grimes takes the action and the chorus responds to it,” he says. “And the way the town reacts to Peter Grimes is the crux of the story. There is this hysteria that has crept into the town.” The hostile atmosphere comes across in the music from the very first moments of the opera. “In the courtroom scene, there’s just these mutterings of discontent,” Palumbo explains. “The way the music is written it starts very low and it builds and builds and builds, and then it dies away again—like they don’t dare utter these things, they don’t want to go out on a limb too far, but they certainly have these feelings. And then it builds and builds and builds again until the scene where they finally decide to go after Grimes.” Another important aspect of the choral writing in Peter Grimes is the way Britten creates mood and color. “After the court scene there’s an interlude,” Palumbo continues, “and then we have to somehow paint a picture of this town waking up, a town that’s all geared around the sea. In the delivery of the text the choral writing has to convey the location. Just like the orchestra ‘plays’ the sea in the Sea Interludes, we have to present the picture of a community that is tied to the sea. The sound of the chorus has to have that flexibility to convey the water. And then later in the storm sequence, everything is very angular and aggressive and rhythmic in the chorus. The chorus has its own storm scene, just like the orchestral storm scene. So we try to vocally create these sounds in the choral writing. It’s a fascinating piece, there are so many little segments to it.”

This entry was posted by Philipp Brieler on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 8:40 am and is filed under New Production Countdown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.