Saturday, October 31, 2009

PETER GRIMES last night


Some of us are lucky to now have something very special. Heavens knows how many performances come and go and fade and change with time or disappear completely. Sometimes, rarely, something magic and transcendental stamps itself so deep in the psyche that it is there forever, embedded. They make a change, make you change, make you different. I'm different because of this Peter Grimes.



Thinking about Stuart Skelton's Peter Grimes I am left with how completely he wasn't for a fraction anyone but Peter Grimes. I didn't once think about watching Stuart Skelton. Even for his solo curtain call it took a while to shed the character. The assumption of the role was absolutely complete, dramatically and vocally. I couldn't imagine this character communicating any other way. The spoken word would never have been enough. And Skelton's big beautiful voice was so married to the word that it wasn't his natural way of dealing with his world wasn't ever in question. He was, and is, fearless - he spoke without the slightest arrogance about this in the broadcast interview. And put his vocal resources into a fearless player and you have a definitive Peter Grimes. I talked with a man before the performance who had heard both Pears and Vickers live. Now he can say he's heard Pears and Vickers and Skelton.

I keep coming back to the moment on opening night when, in the panic of the beating mob arriving at the door of his hut, he startled, let the rope slip, realising instantly what now lay before him as he spun around helplessly, tragically but never pathetically. The mob had killed the apprentice; Peter would receive the death sentence. I'll never forget that look on his face.







It's all been said







6 comments:

Sarah said...

I've never been happier to see the No Photography rule broken. Photo #1 has now replaced Cio-Cio San as my wallpaper.

wanderer said...

Photography? What photography? I was talking about embedding and recall and managed to plug into my pineal gland (it takes practice) and...

Sarah said...

Of course. In that case, I congratulate your pineal gland. Despite its somehow having missed Balstrode entirely.

wanderer said...

They try, they try to do their best, but glands are glands. I think I can speak for it and suggest it was very preoccupied with Stuart Skelton. It hopes you are appeased.

Sarah said...

[Apologies in advance if I'm doubling up, computer playing tricks.]

My own having done a very good job of storing Balstrode away (albeit not in transmittable form), I am appeased.

Sarah said...

(Thanks for the extra photo. What a tragic fangrrl I've become.)