Benjamin Britten’s opera, based on George Crabbe’s The Borough, has opened in a new Met production this season to add yet another contribution to the inescapable Manhattanite excoriation of small town life and draw the usual amount of theatrical attention to the now cliché figure of the isolated loner.  John Doyle, one of several stage directors making his Met debut this year, constantly reminds us of the opera’s social confines in his uniset, a massive retractable wall of salt and sea battered wood that fills the Met proscenium top to bottom.  With no fewer than eleven door or window-shaped apertures scaling its height and breadth, the structure gives ample room to the snooping and scheming of the solo characters and Greek chorus of townspeople.  Its vast scale, however, had the unfortunate effect of overwhelming the characters on the stage below, and its grayish brown omnipresence became wearying as the night went on.  It seemed out of place to have the sleek three-tiered steel superstructure, which enables the performers to gain the upper reaches of the set (and whose maquette was the chief advance image advertising the production), hidden from view until the last three minutes of the opera and then populated only by dummies.  But the audience got the point – petit bourgeois small town life is no fun, especially if you’re a little different.
        Peter Grimes has had a notable place in the American vocal scene almost from the time of its 1945 world premiere.  It first arrived at the Met only three years later, in a production with Frederick Jagel, Regina Resnik, and Jerome Hines.  Tyrone Guthrie’s 1967 production, which Doyle’s new production now replaces, was a vehicle for the great dramatic tenor Jon Vickers and was graced by Renee Fleming, Elisabeth Soderstrom, Lucine Amara, Thomas Stewart, James Morris, Geraint Evans, and other international stars.  In the young tenor Anthony Dean Griffey the Met has found an excellent performer of the new generation to fit the title role.  Although differently voiced than tenors of Vickers’s stature, Griffey’s performance lacked nothing in drama or sound.  His delicate tenor, which reminded one of Peter Pears, who created this and most other major Britten tenor roles, is indeed probably better suited to it than a heavier voice.  How else should we cast an awkward fisherman whose apprentices mysteriously keep dying, though through no direct fault of his own?  Patricia Racette acted a great schoolmarm in the role of Ellen Orford, but the voice proved justifiably unknown for its aesthetic qualities or diction.  Anthony Michaels-Moore has grown and grown as an artist over the years.  His Captain Balstrode was forceful and strong.  John Del Carlo’s studied bass made the lawyerly role of Swallow into something more than a cameo.  Felicity Palmer’s widowed and drug addicted village gossip, Mrs. Sedley, got a lot of laughs and helped illustrate the singer’s versatility.  The ensemble soloists and chorus represented the Met at its very best and most thoroughly prepared.  Donald Runnicles conducted with an authority that confirms him squarely in the lead among interpreters of twentieth-century music.  Britten’s orchestral interludes, meant to evoke the sea and related elements, resounded with emotional insight and much needed connection to the audience.