Britten - Peter Grimes / Davis, Vickers, Harper, Bailey, Royal Opera Covent Garden
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Colin Davis, Jon VickersDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Classical, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 155 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-11-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kultur Video
Movie Reviews of Britten - Peter Grimes / Davis, Vickers, Harper, Bailey, Royal Opera Covent Garden
Movie Review: Musically Deficient, but a Must See for Vickers!
Summary: 4 Stars
First, forget reviewers comparing the music with Verdi or Puccini. This isn't even close. The music is meant to accentuate the mood of a dank, musty, seaside town and Sir Colin Davis succeeds admirably but do not look for Verdi's melodic quality or Puccini's lyrical beauty here.
Also does it matter that Britten wrote it for Pears and not Vickers? Or that Vickers was a homophobe? Not one of the multitude of roles Callas made her own was written specifically for her and Vickers worked amicably side by side with a bunch of openly gay men, whether he liked it or not. I'm tired of hearing both these things.
The fact is the music and lyrics of Peter Grimes are not very good(though they set the mood) despite the best efforts of Sir Colin Davis,the cast,and orchestra.
What makes this opera watchable, and the reason people still try to revive this piece is Jon Vickers. I wonder if I've ever seen a man act so well whether it be on stage, in film, on disc, wherever! Forgive my hyperbole but Vicker's performance is like a Titan who laments his ruin to gods who do not hear his plea. This is the greatest single acting performance I've seen or heard in opera. Being a HUGE Callas fan I don't say that lightly.
Summary of Britten - Peter Grimes / Davis, Vickers, Harper, Bailey, Royal Opera Covent Garden
Royal Opera Chorus. Peter Grimes was the work that established Benjamin Britten as a major musical force when it was first performed in 1945. It is now universally acknowledged as one of the twentieth century's finest operas. In this performance Canadian tenor Jon Vickers - internationally acclaimed for his portrayal of Grimes - heads a cast that gives vivid life to this masterpiece.More than half a century after stunning the music world at its 1945 premiere (just a month after the war had ended in Europe), Peter Grimes still overwhelms. It's anchored itself as arguably one of the top 10 works of music theater from postwar Europe. And you can easily experience why in a performance as focused, thrilling, and emotionally compelling as the present one (from the second Covent Garden production, mounted in 1975), with a cast of world-class Britten interpreters. A measure of the opera's artistic depth is the simple fact of how compendious it is, convincing in fundamentally divergent accounts, such as the original canonical Britten-Pears interpretation.
At a far remove here is the equally legendary Peter Grimes of Canadian tenor Jon Vickers. Even distilled via a home theater system, you get a good sense of why so many longtime opera-goers still recall his live performances of the role as a touchstone of operatic power. Vickers brings his huge frame and voice to bear on all the contradictions that make this outcast so strangely repulsive and moving at the same time. His Grimes isn't merely a victim. This fisherman is implacably misunderstood, feverishly ambitious, gruff, gifted with a touch of the poet yet unable to connect, and ultimately--in a tour de force of vocal acting--hounded to madness by the centrifugal energy of his complex personality.
Heather Harper exudes convincing compassion as Ellen Orford, the woman who hopes to save Grimes through her love, but she also voices a clear brand of fatalism that intriguingly links her to the townsfolk of the Borough, failing to see a way to break free from the pattern. Norman Bailey's Capt. Balstrode is a realist who tries his hardest to understand Grimes. The role of the Royal Opera Chorus in venting the village collective is crucial and effective--whether in innocent merrymaking, as a kind of Greek chorus, or as a malevolent moral majority in need of its scapegoat. A younger Colin Davis proves why he became known as a Britten specialist, leading a forceful, dynamic performance that explodes with violence and is keenly sympathetic to the score's symphonic web of texture. Elisha Moshinksy (who made his Covent Garden debut with this production) directs with grim and powerful delineation against a pared-down stage-set of boardwalk that becomes alternatively claustrophobic and barren, while Britten's brilliant music keeps the seascape ever present in the mind's ear and eye. --Thomas May
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