Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, whose 200th birthdays are being celebrated this year, took a while to find their operatic footing. But not Benjamin Britten, who’ll be a mere 100 in November. With his first opera, Peter Grimes, Britten burst onto the scene as a master in the genre.
Jay Lesenger was a teenager when he first saw Peter Grimes at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1967.
Those who attend Saturday’s 8:15 p.m. Amphitheater performance of Benjamin Britten’s 1945 masterpiece will witness the Chautauqua Opera Company’s artistic/general director’s vision — 46 years in the making — turned into a gripping reality.
The Amphitheater, navicular in appearance, will serve as an ideal venue in which to nestle the opera’s setting: a small fishing village on England’s eastern shores.
The Daily sat down with six key players in the Chautauqua Opera Company’s production of Peter Grimes, with the goal of better grasping how the show might be received both by opera lovers and also by those who have never experienced what composer Richard Wagner called “a total work of art.”
The Chautauquan Daily 