Peter Grimes ends up wearing the same dirty white Sunday suit that killed his second apprentice in an accident. In Benjamin Britten’s opera, Jonas Kaufmann stands there all alone, barefoot, on the empty stage of the National Theater and, accompanied only by the soft hooting of a foghorn, only produces a few pale, compressed tones. Nobody can be lonelier. And when Balstrode (a sea dog with a heart: Christopher Purves) tells the fisherman to put his boat to sea and not come back, Ellen lets out a scream; Peter looks at her painfully one last time.
That was the touching highlight of an evening, which also turned into a moment of glory for the instruments. The way Erik Nielsen and the rested and enormously motivated State Orchestra illuminated the furor, but also the often cleverly dimmed richness of color and the tones of sadness and longing in Britten’s score, was terrific.
In Stefan Herheim’s dense, sometimes fantastically unreal, then again intensely realistic staging, a bigoted village community (also excellent: the choir of the Bavarian State Opera) observes Peter Grimes in their vaulted community hall (stage: Silke Bauer) with suspicion when they are not looking at the harbour, looks at the sea, the moon or a solar eclipse. This space can mysteriously widen and narrow, become a theater or a church.
Jonas Kaufmann sings and plays Peter confidently at first, but as his delusion increases, he gives him more and more muted tones in his characteristic tenor, so that performance and singing merge. As in the premiere half a year ago, Rachel Willis-Sørensen embodies a wonderful, sympathetic Ellen Orford with a fantastically beautiful, full-bodied soprano, who would have become a strong woman at Peter’s side. But even the smallest supporting role is excellently cast in this production.