ENO’s Peter Grimes shows a major international company operating at full artistic power 

In David Alden’s production of Peter Grimes, the mob assembles before the music has even started – silhouetted at the back, muttering and menacing. Ah, Britten’s mob: simultaneously the source of some of the most electrifying, elemental choral writing since Mussorgsky and a licence for British directors to indulge in premium-strength snobbery. Fully endorsed by the composer, of course: it’s essential to Britten’s artistic schema that we believe the inhabitants of small-town England are only ever one beer away from forming a lynch mob. As their hatred boils over, Alden has them pull out little Union Flags, completely without pretext. There’s no trace of political nationalism anywhere in the libretto or score. 

It’s a curious way to read this unsettling opera. Surely it’d be all the more unsettling if we felt that we could be part of that crowd? Instead, we’re reassured that these ghastly provincials are absolutely not Our Sort of People.