Britten's Peter Grimes

Kate Kennedy chooses her favourite recording of Britten's Peter Grimes

The opera Peter Grimes is set in a fictional small town that bears some resemblance to Britten's home of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on England's east coast. It is a drama about outsiders and oppression. As Britten himself said, it was "a subject very close to my heart – the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual". The score is full of great orchestral descriptions of the Suffolk coast and highly dramatic confrontations.