Music Director Jakub Hrůša led The Royal Opera’s universally acclaimed production of Britten’s Peter Grimes. “The unmissable, world-class” (The Telegraph, 5*) revival of Deborah Warner’s staging, starring Allan Clayton in the title role, Maria Bengtsson as Ellen Orford, and Bryn Terfel as Captain Balstrode, was performed at The Royal Opera House Covent Garden and concluded on 28 May.
In her 5-star review in The Guardian, Erica Jeal writes that in, “This gripping revival…[Hrůša] drives his excellent orchestra relentlessly forwards, sending us headlong into this opera’s strange tragedy.”
“This world-class performance of one of our greatest operas is unmissable…stronger than ever,” hails Nicholas Kenyon in his 5-star review in The Telegraph. He continues, “with even greater impact under the galvanising baton of Jakub Hrůša…the precision and tension of his reading reasserts the status of Peter Grimes as one of the greatest music-dramas of our time.”
“Allan Clayton and Jakub Hrůša make Britten sound newly urgent…a cast performing at the top of its game,” notes Keith McDonnell in his 5-star MusicOMH review. “Under Jakub Hrůša’s direction…Benjamin Britten’s score emerged with a clarity, urgency and sheer dramatic voltage that felt genuinely revelatory…The Storm Interlude, in particular, was astonishing – delivered with an elemental fury I’ve rarely heard matched. This was not simply descriptive writing; it felt like the externalisation of Grimes’ inner world. Hrůša controlled the build with absolute command, allowing tension to accumulate without release.”
“This show…delivers on all fronts, with the conductor [Jakub Hrůša] unleashing the storm-like power of Britten’s score and the combined vocal and instrumental forces at his disposal to stunning effect,” writes Dr Adrian York in his 5-star London Unattached review. The Spectator’s Richard Bratby highlights “Jakub Hrůša ‘s Janacek-inflected way with the score,” adding that it, “gives Britten a gravelly, red-blooded physicality that you wouldn’t have thought possible. It’s superb.”
“Warner’s visually terrifying representation is underpinned by the Royal Opera Chorus on top form and the company’s hugely impressive orchestra under the secure leadership of Jakub Hrůša, whose feeling for sonority and balance is impeccable, ” writes George Hall in The Stage, with London Theatre’s Julia Rank praising “the tremendously dramatic conducting of Jakub Hrůša brings out the full dark beauty and power of Britten’s score”
The Times’ Neil Fisher reports that, “The Royal Opera’s music director Jakub Hrůša…draws sharply detailed playing from the orchestra, most of all a Passacaglia of transporting and desolate beauty and shapes the score with cumulative power.”
Bachtrack’s Christopher Woodley writes, “Jakub Hrůša and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House summoned up eerie depictions of the sea and all its works and added the sting to the baying of the mob,” noting that, “Hrůša really got under the skin of the score.”
And The Standard’s Barry Millington completes the thunderous acclaim writing “The conductor is now Covent Garden’s music director Jakub Hrůša and his contribution is revelatory. The ‘glitter of sunlight’ referenced in Montagu Slater’s idiosyncratic libretto has never been more brilliantly reflected… superlatively delivered by the Royal Opera orchestra.”
Watch The Royal Opera’s Peter Grimes Trailer
Photo: Charlie Clift