On the Margin of Sea and Society: "Peter Grimes" and Romantic Naturalism.

This article critically evaluates the opera "Peter Grimes," by Benjamin Britten. A literary critic approaching the history of the composition of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes encounters a somewhat unusual circumstance. "Peter Grimes" is unusual because the first germ of the opera was provided by t...

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Published in:University of Toronto Quarterly Vol. 74; no. 2; pp. 636 - 648
Main Author: Bewell, Alan
Format: Article
Published: University of Toronto Press Spring2005
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: On the Margin of Sea and Society: "Peter Grimes" and Romantic Naturalism.
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        au: Bewell, Alan
        affil: University of Toronto
      su:
        Peter Grimes (Theatrical production)
        Britten, Benjamin, 1913-1976
        Opera
        Crabbe, George, 1754-1832
        Poets
        Critics
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        subj:
          Peter Grimes (Theatrical production)
          Britten, Benjamin, 1913-1976
          Opera
          Crabbe, George, 1754-1832
          Poets
          Critics
      ab: This article critically evaluates the opera "Peter Grimes," by Benjamin Britten. A literary critic approaching the history of the composition of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes encounters a somewhat unusual circumstance. "Peter Grimes" is unusual because the first germ of the opera was provided by the novelist and critic E. M. Forster in a radio talk on the English poet George Crabbe that Britten came upon in a 1941 issue of the Listener. Throughout the opera, Britten uses all the stage and musical resources of opera, including extensive interludes, to produce this particular environment, for more was at stake for him than the opera itself. If Crabbe on his best behavior was barely suitable for joining the ranks of accepted poets, and even more of a challenge for an opera, the person whom Britten actually chose to make his protagonist embodies everything that troubled Crabbe's contemporaries about his writing.
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