Benjamin Britten

Peter
Grimes
CONDUCTOR Opera in a prologue and three acts
Donald Runnicles Text by Montagu Slater, after the poem
“The Borough” by George Crabbe
PRODUCTION
John Doyle
Saturday, March 15, 2008, 1:30–4:45pm
SET DESIGNER
Scott Pask New Production
COSTUME DESIGNER
Ann Hould-Ward

LIGHTING DESIGNER
Peter Mumford The production of Peter Grimes was
made possible by a generous gift from
Mr. and Mrs. Wilmer J. Thomas, Jr.

GENERAL MANAGER
Peter Gelb

MUSIC DIRECTOR
James Levine
 2007-08 Season

The 69th Metropolitan Opera performance of

Benjamin Britten’s

Peter Grimes
This performance is
broadcast live over Conductor
Donald Runnicles
The Toll Brothers–
Metropolitan
Opera International in order of vocal appearance

Radio Network,
Hobson Two nieces
sponsored by
Dean Peterson Leah Partridge
Toll Brothers, Erin Morley
America’s luxury Swallow
®
home builder , John Del Carlo Ned Keene
with generous Teddy Tahu Rhodes
long-term Peter Grimes
support from Anthony Dean Griffey
The Annenberg Mrs. Sedley Boy
Foundation Felicity Palmer Logan William Erickson
and the
Vincent A. Stabile Ellen Orford Villagers
Endowment for Patricia Racette Roger Andrews, David
Broadcast Media, Asch, Kenneth Floyd,
Auntie David Frye, Jason
and through Jill Grove
contributions from Hendrix, Mary Hughes,
listeners worldwide. Bob Boles Robert Maher, Timothy
Greg Fedderly Breese Miller, Jeffrey
This afternoon’s Mosher, Richard Pearson,
performance is also Captain Balstrode Mark Persing, Mitchell
being broadcast Anthony Michaels-Moore Sendrowitz, Daniel
live on Metropolitan Clark Smith, Lynn Taylor,
Opera Radio, on Rev. Horace Adams Joseph Turi
Sirius Satellite Radio Bernard Fitch
channel 85.

Saturday, March 15, 2008, 1:30–4:45pm

 This afternoon’s performance is being transmitted
live in high definition to movie theaters worldwide.
The Met: Live in HD is generously supported
by the Neubauer Family Foundation.

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Anthony Dean Griffey Chorus Master Donald Palumbo
in the title role of Musical Preparation Linda Hall, Howard Watkins,
Britten’s Peter Grimes Ransom Wilson, and Carol Isaac
Assistant Stage Directors Eric Einhorn, J. Knighten Smit, and
Kathleen Smith Belcher
Stage Band Conductor Gregory Buchalter
English Coach Loretta Di Franco
Prompter Carol Isaac
Met Titles Francis Rizzo
Assistant Set Designer Orit Jacoby Carroll
Assistants to Scott Pask Lauren Alvarez and Jeff Hinchee
Associate Costume Designer Sidney Shannon
Scenery, properties, and electrical props constructed and
painted in Metropolitan Opera Shops
Costumes executed by Metropolitan Opera Costume
Department
Wigs by Metropolitan Opera Wig Department

Peter Grimes is performed by arrangement with Boosey &

Hawkes, Inc., publisher and copyright owner.

This performance is made possible in part by public funds

from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Classic Met broadcasts are
available on demand at
Before the performance begins, please switch off
Rhapsody.com.
cell phones and other electronic devices.
Yamaha is the official piano
of the Metropolitan Opera.
Latecomers will not be Met Titles
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performance. Spanish. To activate, press the red button to the right of the screen in front
of your seat and follow the instructions provided. To turn off the display,
press the red button once again. If you have questions please ask an usher
Visit metopera.org at intermission.
 Synopsis

A small fishing town on the east coast of Suffolk, around 1830

Prologue
Moot Hall

Act I
scene 1 The Borough
scene 2 Inside the Boar Inn

Intermission

Act II
scene 1 The Borough
scene 2 Grimes’s hut

Intermission

Act III
The Borough

Prologue
During an inquest at the town hall, the lawyer Swallow questions the fisherman
Peter Grimes about the death of his apprentice during a storm at sea. Though
the room is crowded with villagers hostile to Grimes, Swallow accepts the man’s
explanation of the event and rules that the boy died accidentally. He warns
Grimes not to take on another apprentice until he lives with a woman who can
care for the boy. When the hall empties, Ellen Orford, the schoolmistress, asks
Grimes to have courage and promises to help him find a better life.

Act I
On the beach villagers look out to the sea. Balstrode, a retired sea captain,
warns that a storm is approaching. Grimes calls for help from the harbor to
land his boat. When Grimes finally gets ashore the apothecary Ned Keene tells
him that he has found the fisherman a new apprentice at a workhouse. When
the carrier Hobson refuses to fetch the boy, Ellen offers to go with him. The
villagers make hostile comments, and she accuses them of hypocrisy (“Let her
among you without fault cast the first stone”). As the storm rises and the crowd
disperses, Grimes is left alone with Balstrode, who tries to convince him to leave
the village. The fisherman explains that first he has to make enough money to
open a store and marry Ellen.

That night, as the storm rages, the villagers gather at Auntie’s tavern. Auntie’s
“nieces” are frightened by the wind and Bob Boles gets into a fight with Balstrode

34
Synopsis continued

over one of them. When Grimes enters looking for his new apprentice, there is
a sudden silence, and he begins talking to himself, mystifying everyone (“Now
the Great Bear and Pleiades”). The drunken Boles tries to attack Grimes. In an
attempt to restore quiet, Ned Keene starts singing a sea shanty (“Old Joe has
gone fishing”). Hobson and Ellen arrive with Grimes’s new apprentice, John.
The fisherman immediately leaves, taking the boy back into the storm and to
his hut.

Act II
On Sunday morning, as Ellen and John are watching the villagers go to church
(“Glitter of waves”) she discovers a bruise on the young boy’s neck. Grimes
comes to take John fishing, and when Ellen tells him that he cannot buy peace
by hard work, he hits her and drags the child off. Auntie, Ned Keene, and Bob
Boles have observed the incident and the members of the congregation hear
about it as they come out of church. The men decide to confront the fisherman,
and despite Ellen’s protests the angry mob marches off to Grimes’s hut. Ellen,
Auntie, and the nieces remain behind, reflecting on the childishness of men.

Grimes orders John to dress for work. He dreams of the life he had planned
with Ellen, but his thoughts return to his dead apprentice. As he hears the mob
approaching, he rushes John out. The boy slips and falls down the cliff. Grimes
escapes. Bob Boles and the rector find the hut empty and orderly, and decide
that they have misjudged Grimes. The villagers disperse, except for Balstrode,
who looks over the cliff and knows better.

Act III
A dance is under way in the town hall. Outside, Mrs. Sedley tries to convince Ned
Keene that Grimes has murdered his apprentice. Balstrode enters with Ellen and
tells her that Grimes’s boat has returned but that there is no sign of him or the boy.
He has also found John’s jersey, and Ellen remembers embroidering the anchor
on it (“Embroidery in childhood was a luxury”). Mrs. Sedley has overheard the
conversation and informs Swallow that Grimes’s boat is back. Once again, the
crowd sets off on a manhunt.

Grimes, deranged and raving, listens to the villagers shouting his name in the
distance. He hardly notices Ellen and Balstrode, who try to comfort him. Ellen
asks Grimes to come home, but Balstrode tells him to sail out. As dawn breaks,
the villagers return to their daily chores.

Visit metopera.org 37
 In Focus

Benjamin Britten
Peter Grimes

Premiere: Sadler’s Wells, London, 1945

“The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual,” Benjamin Britten
told a Time magazine interviewer shortly after the premiere of Peter Grimes.
The opera subtly explores the nature of judgment, as the title character’s alleged
crime—child abuse—is suspected rather than proven and suggested rather than
graphically portrayed. Peter Grimes has been popular with audiences and critics
since its first performance—a rare accomplishment for an English-language,
20th-century work. Its popularity is due to several factors: an evocative score,
a powerful use of chorus and orchestra, and a monumental title role of such
dramatic potential that it can be explored over and over again by any tenor
prepared to face its challenges.

The Creators
British-born Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) was a leading composer in a wide
variety of genres, and several of his operas have proven to be among the most
enduring of the 20th century. In addition to his unique musical voice, Britten had
an excellent sense for source material and collaborated with many outstanding
librettists. Among these was Montagu Slater (1902–1956), a writer noted for
addressing political and social issues in his works. The source for Peter Grimes is
“The Borough,” a poem by poet and naturalist George Crabbe (1754–1832).

The Setting
The story is set in the Borough, a deliberately non-specific seaside village
on England’s east coast that bears some comparison with Crabbe’s (and
eventually Britten’s) hometown of Aldeburgh. Britten conceived the work as
set “around 1830.”

The Music
One of the most appealing facets of this opera is that the score is neither strictly
traditional nor self-consciously radical. It strikes a dramatically convincing
balance between lyricism and dissonance. The celebrated orchestral “Sea
Interludes” that connect several of the scenes are beautiful and powerful when
heard on their own, but within the opera become much more than brilliant scene-
painting. They are, as is the rest of the score, supreme examples of opera’s
ability to create a connection between external events and characters’ inner
lives. In addition to the magnificent symphonic orchestral writing he achieves in
the work, Britten creates remarkable effects for individual instruments. Unison

38
In Focus continued

horns rise and fall to represent the swelling sea; flutes depict moonlight. Like
the orchestra, the large vocal ensemble sometimes functions as a unified chorus
(as with the chilling cries of “Peter Grimes!” at the end of Act III, Scene 1) and
as a fragmented body of individuals. The sea shanty at the end of the first act is
a perfect example: the townspeople’s collective singing marks Grimes, who is
unable (or unwilling) to sing along, as an outsider. The character’s compelling
mad scene in the final act, though not a freestanding concert piece like many of
the famous soprano mad scenes of the previous century, is a stunning portrayal
of a personal breakdown.

Peter Grimes at the Met

The opera had its Met premiere in 1948 with a largely American cast: tenor
Frederick Jagel in the title role, Regina Resnik as Ellen Orford, and Jerome
Hines in the important supporting role of Swallow. It was repeated the following
year with Lawrence Tibbett in the role of Balstrode. The work then fell out of
the repertory until 1967, when an impressive new production by Tyrone Guthrie
featured the great Canadian tenor Jon Vickers in what would become one of
his most celebrated roles, sung 37 more times until 1984. Conductor Colin
Davis made his Met debut with these performances, leading a superb cast that
also included Lucine Amara, Geraint Evans, and Lili Chookasian. The Guthrie
production also featured the diverse talents of such artists as James Morris
(1973), Thomas Stewart (1983–84), Elisabeth Söderström (1983), Anthony Rolfe-
Johnson (1994), Renée Fleming (1994), Patricia Racette (1997–98), and Philip
Langridge (1997-98) in its revivals.

Visit metopera.org 39
 Note from the Director

P
eter Grimes is a story of a man who is shut out by his community, a
community that judges him vehemently and aggressively. Grimes is a
complex character. He is by nature an outsider. He is flawed. But unlike so
many operatic figures, he appears to be an ordinary man.
The community itself, oppressive and judgmental, fascinates me. I was
raised in a town where everybody knew everybody else, and now I live in
what was a fishing community on the English coast, where nearly everybody
knows everybody else. This can make you sometimes feel part of a family and
sometimes feel like an outsider.
The opportunity to explore this wonderful work in the auspicious
surroundings of this great house can sometimes overwhelm and sometimes be
simply liberating.
The overwhelming part involves the sheer scale and wonder of the storytelling
experience under the remarkable conditions of this very special place. The
liberation comes from the realization that in all circumstances, large and small,
artists still strive to tell the truth and to “get out of the way” of the story.
We are exploring the opera’s religiously oppressive community in each day
of rehearsal, and in this we are aided by the sheer power of the magnificent Met
chorus.
So, of course, the production has been influenced by the communities I
know and by my spending time in the community Britten knew. I hope, though,
that it can maybe touch on a community you yourself know. That is what makes
theater. —John Doyle

40
Program Note

“A
t the dress rehearsal I thought the whole thing would be a disaster,”
recalled Benjamin Britten, referring to the world premiere of Peter
Grimes. When the final curtain fell on June 7, 1945, at the old Sadler’s
Wells theater in London, silence followed by shouting filled the hall. The stage
crew didn’t know what to make of the reaction, according to Joan Cross, the
original Ellen Orford: “They thought it was a demonstration. Well, it was, but
fortunately it was of the right kind.”
No one could have expected that Britten’s new work would single-handedly
restore prestige to English opera. By the time of the Met’s first performance
of Peter Grimes in 1948, the buzz was enormous. Time magazine even chose
the youthful-looking composer for its cover, posing him against a backdrop of
fishing nets. The accompanying feature article declared that “no opera since the
days of Puccini has had so much advance praise.” Peter Grimes has continued
to live up to that praise. Firmly established as part of the international repertory,
it holds a singular place among operas created since World War II.
It’s just as unlikely that anyone could have foreseen the convoluted path
that led from an obscure literary character to operatic protagonist. Peter Grimes
first appeared as one among a large cast of townsfolk in George Crabbe’s long
epistolary poem from 1810, “The Borough.” Crabbe (who was also, incidentally,
an acclaimed naturalist specializing in the study of beetles) depicts Grimes as
a creepy, sadistic misanthrope, “untouched by pity, unstung by remorse and
uncorrected by shame.” He is a tormenter rather than tormented, strikingly
different from the central figure of Britten’s opera.
An article by E.M. Forster prompted the composer’s discovery of Crabbe’s
poem in 1941, at which point Britten and his partner, Peter Pears, were living in
America. Britten experienced a double epiphany, on both artistic and personal
levels. He not only perceived the operatic potential of ”The Borough” but was
moved by the richly detailed local color of the poem, set on his native East
Anglian seacoast—so much so that he determined to reconnect with his roots.
As soon as it became possible, he ended his self-imposed exile and returned to
war-ravaged England, which the composer and Pears had fled in part because
of their pacifism.
Britten homed in on Peter Grimes as the prospective opera’s central character
(he appears in just one section of Crabbe’s poem). What attracted him was the
potent dynamic of “the individual against the crowd, with ironic overtones for
our own situation,” the composer wrote. Here he alluded explicitly to the scorn
he and Pears faced as conscientious objectors upon returning to England—but
also, implicitly, to their outsider status as a couple. “This led us to make Grimes
a character of vision and conflict, the tortured idealist he is, rather than the villain
he was in Crabbe,” Britten explained.
Britten and Pears drafted a scenario that dramatically transformed the
ruthless bully depicted by the poet. Christopher Isherwood was their first choice

45
 Program Note continued

as librettist; when he declined, they turned to the left-wing writer Montagu

Slater, with whom Britten had previously collaborated in the thirties, writing
incidental music for two of his plays. Slater brought his own preoccupations
to the libretto, although the composer ended up vetoing a number of his
choices (as well as some he himself had originally suggested). Working with
these various layers embodied in the final libretto, Britten then added a further
dimension with his music.
As a result, the hapless fisherman is fleshed out into one of the great
operatic paradoxes: an outsider characterized both by his uniqueness and
by his archetypal amplitude, capable—like the Byronic hero he in some ways
resembles—of mirroring contradictory identities. Britten’s Grimes contains
aspects encompassing the prophetic visionary, the misunderstood artist, the
egotist, the driven capitalist who will “fish the sea dry,” the eternal child, and
the troubled transgressor.
But all of these traits exist within the context of the Borough—and it is the
interplay between Grimes and his setting that is at the heart of the opera. The
Austrian-British musicologist Hans Keller comments that Grimes “cannot show,
let alone prove, his tenderness as easily as his wrath—except through the music
which, alas, the people on the stage don’t hear. Thus he is destined to seem
worse than he is and not to be as good as he feels.” For example, when Grimes
testifies during the inquest in the prologue, the musical texture directs our
sympathies toward him with held chords—“like the halo of string sound” in a
Bach Passion, as the music critic Michael Kennedy observes.
At the same time, Peter Grimes is hardly a simple parable of oppressors and
oppressed. One aspect that makes the opera so involving is how ingeniously
Britten’s music differentiates the townspeople—from quirky, Dickensian strokes,
for example, for Swallow and Mrs. Sedley to the full portrait of Ellen Orford.
She shares something of Grimes’s outsider stigma, after all, and is the central
figure who tries to mediate between him and the Borough. Her duet with the
fisherman subtly illustrates their tragically illusory connection: Grimes sings in a
key separated by a half-step but briefly, at the end, gravitates into her harmonic
field. Later, at the climactic moment when Grimes strikes out at Ellen, he erupts in
a motif (“And God have mercy upon me!”) that, with resounding irony, is taken up
by the villagers in their menacingly mocking chant “Grimes is at his exercise!”
Britten creates an impressive but economical network of tonal symbolism
that tracks Grimes’s relationships not only with the Borough but also with the
natural elements he tries to master—and into which he eventually dissolves. The
six interludes offer a symphonic parallel to the collective of the townspeople,
where the sea provides its own chorus-like commentary. In the second interlude,
for example, Britten modulates between outer and inner landscape: the thrashing
storm music also mimics Grimes’s turmoil, and it incorporates the yearning
intervals of the vision he has just expressed in “What harbor shelters peace.”

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Program Note continued

A measure of the opera’s depth is that it has been able so convincingly

to accommodate widely divergent interpretations. The Met’s new production
by Tony Award–winning director John Doyle adds yet another perspective.
While the original interpreter, Peter Pears, emphasized the title character’s
fundamental humanity—portraying him as a sensitive misfit—Canadian
tenor Jon Vickers (who first sang the role at the Met in 1967) ratcheted up his
contradictions, declaring he used “one kind of voice for the inner Grimes, and
another for the outer Grimes.” Writer Andrew Porter enthused over how Vickers,
with “one of the few voices that can set the enormous Met ringing,” was able
to shape a performance in which “his voice, his features, his demeanor are
distorted, transfigured.”
Whatever we decide is the cause of Grimes’s conflicted nature, the
opera’s tragic inevitability exerts a pull that seems both timeless and distinctly
contemporary. In part this is because, as Peter Pears once remarked, “There
are plenty of Grimeses around still, I think!”—a notion the Met’s new Grimes,
Anthony Dean Griffey, has echoed. It is the genius of Britten’s music to make
us feel what is at stake, what has been lost, and how the pattern threatens
to be repeated as the Borough resumes “the cold beginning of another day.”
We return to Peter Grimes, as Porter justly claims, because “its freshness, its
dramatic force, its richness of musical structure, and its illuminations of private
and public behavior seem ever to grow.” —Thomas May

Visit metopera.org 47
 The Cast and Creative Team

Donald Runnicles
conductor

birthplace Edinburgh, Scotland

this season Die Walküre, Manon Lescaut, and Peter Grimes at the Met; Tannhäuser, Die
Zauberflöte, The Rake’s Progress, and Wagner’s Ring cycle with the San Francisco Opera;
Der Rosenkavalier and Der Fliegende Holländer with the Vienna State Opera; and concert
engagements with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic.
met appearances Lulu (debut, 1988), Der Fliegende Holländer, Le Nozze di Figaro, Der
Rosenkavalier, Salome, Werther, and Die Zauberflöte.
career highlights Conducts regularly at the Salzburg and Bayreuth festivals and appears
with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Munich’s Bavarian
Radio Orchestra, among many others. He has been music director and principal conductor
of the San Francisco Opera since 1992 and is music director of the Grand Teton Music
Festival and principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

John Doyle
director

birthplace Inverness, Scotland

this season Peter Grimes for his Met debut and the Broadway production of A Catered
Affair.
career highlights Received the 2006 Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical for his
Broadway debut production of Sweeney Todd; last season his production of Company
won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. He also recently directed Rise and Fall
of the City of Mahagonny for Los Angeles Opera and Lucia di Lammermoor for Scottish
Opera. While artistic director of four prestigious theaters in the United Kingdom, many
of his productions received best-musical awards, including Fiddler on the Roof and Moll
Flanders. Productions for London’s West End include The Gondoliers, Mack and Mabel,
and the Olivier Award–nominated Sweeney Todd. He has also directed numerous classic
plays, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Open Air Theatre, The Wars of the
Roses for York Theatre Royal, and Amadeus for Wilton’s Music Hall.

Scott Pask
set designer

birthplace Rochester, New York

this season Peter Grimes for his Met debut and four productions on Broadway: David
Mamet’s November, John Waters’s Cry-Baby: The Musical, Terrence McNally’s The Ritz, and
Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses for the Roundabout Theatre Company.
career highlights Broadway theater credits include The Coast of Utopia for Lincoln Center
Theater, for which he won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and American
Theatre Wing Hewes Design awards; set and costume design for Martin McDonagh’s The

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The Cast and Creative Team continued

Pillowman (Tony Award for Scenic Design), David Hare’s The Vertical Hour, Nine for the
Roundabout Theatre Company, Richard Greenberg’s Take Me Out, La Cage aux Folles,
Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, Urinetown, and Sweet Charity. His London theater credits
include Love Song and On an Average Day, both for the West End, and Hampton’s Tales
From Hollywood for the Donmar Warehouse. He also designed the sets and costumes for
Britten’s Albert Herring for Opera North.

Ann Hould-Ward
costume designer

birthplace Glasgow, Montana

this season Peter Grimes for her Met debut and A Catered Affair on Broadway.
career highlights Her work on Broadway includes costumes for Company (Tony, Best
Revival), Dance of the Vampires, Beauty and the Beast (Tony, ATW’s Design Award, Ovation
Award, Olivier nomination for Best Costume Design), Into the Woods (Drama Desk and
L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards), Falsettos, Sunday in the Park with George (Tony, Drama
Desk nominations), Harrigan ‘n Hart, Dream, St. Joan, Three Men on a Horse, Timon of
Athens, In the Summer House, Little Me, and The Moliere Comedies. Work Off-Broadway
includes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Antony and Cleopatra, House Arrest, Cymbeline
(all for the Public Theater), Surviving Grace, and Lobster Alice. She also designed the
costumes for Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny for Los Angeles Opera, the film
Strike!, and for productions at the New York City Opera, San Francisco Ballet, Houston
Grand Opera, Alvin Ailey Dance Company, Ballet Hispanico, American Ballet Theatre, and
the White Oak Dance Project.

Peter Mumford
lighting designer

birthplace London, England

this season Peter Grimes at the Met.
previous production Madama Butterfly (debut, 2006).
career highlights Il Trovatore (Paris Opera); Passion (Minnesota Opera); La Cenerentola
(Glyndebourne); La Traviata (Antwerp Opera); Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Fidelio, and
Don Giovanni (Scottish Opera); Madama Butterfly, Così fan tutte, and L’Incoronazione
di Poppea (English National Opera); Giulio Cesare (Bordeaux Opera); Eugene Onegin
and The Bartered Bride (Covent Garden); and The Midsummer Marriage (Lyric Opera
of Chicago). Recent theater includes Shadowlands, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Last
Confession (West End); The Seagull (Royal Court); The Reporter, The Rose Tattoo, and
The Hothouse (National Theatre); The Entertainer and Richard II (Old Vic); Hedda Gabler
(Almeida); Hamlet and Macbeth (Royal Shakespeare Company); Dying City (Royal Court
and Lincoln Center Theater); and Private Lives (West End and Broadway). He also directed
and designed L’Heure Espagnole and L’Enfant et les Sortilèges for Opera Zuid and
received the 2003 Olivier Award for The Bacchae (RNT).

51
 The Cast and Creative Team continued

Jill Grove
mezzo - soprano

birthplace Galveston, Texas

this season Auntie in Peter Grimes at the Met, Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera with Minnesota
Opera, the Nurse in Die Frau ohne Schatten with Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Erda in Das
Rheingold with San Francisco Opera.
met appearances Omniscient Mussel in Die Ägyptische Helena and Cornelia in Giulio Cesare,
Margret in Wozzeck, Erda in Siegfried and Das Rheingold, Rossweisse in Die Walküre,
Magdalene in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Madelon in Andrea Chénier, Mary in Der
Fliegende Holländer, Emilia in Otello, and Pantalis in Mefistofele (debut, 1999).
career highlights Ulrica in Genoa, Preziosilla in La Forza del Destino with the San Francisco
Opera, Amneris in Aida with Opera Pacific, La Cieca in La Gioconda at Covent Garden,
Azucena in Il Trovatore with Houston Grand Opera, Erda with Lyric Opera of Chicago, and
Auntie with the Santa Fe Opera.

Felicity Palmer
mezzo - soprano

birthplace Cheltenham, England

this season Mrs. Sedley in Peter Grimes and the Marquise of Berkenfield in La Fille du
Régiment at the Met and Josefa Miranda in Peter Eötvös’s Love and Other Demons at the
Glyndebourne Festival.
met appearances Geneviève in Pelléas et Mélisande, the Countess in The Queen of Spades,
the First Prioress in Dialogues des Carmélites, Fricka in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre,
and Waltraute in Götterdämmerung (debut, 2000).
career highlights Recent performances include Kabanicha in Káťa Kabanová and the
Marquise of Berkenfield at Covent Garden, and Madame de Croissy in Dialogues des
Carmélites with Lyric Opera of Chicago. She has also appeared at La Scala, Deutsche
Oper Berlin, Paris Opera, Netherlands Opera, and English National Opera, among many
others. On the concert stage she has sung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los
Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra,
English Chamber Orchestra, and BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Patricia Racette
soprano

birthplaceManchester, New Hampshire

this seasonCio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly and Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes at the Met;
Magda in La Rondine with Los Angeles Opera; Cio-Cio-San in Munich, San Francisco,
and Florence; and concert appearances with the London Philharmonic and Düsseldorf
Philharmonic.
met appearances Musetta (debut, 1995) and Mimì in La Bohème, Roberta in the world
premiere of Picker’s An American Tragedy, Antonia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Blanche de

52
The Cast and Creative Team continued

la Force in Dialogues des Carmélites, Violetta in La Traviata, Alice Ford in Falstaff, Nedda
in Pagliacci, and Elisabeth in Don Carlo.
career highlights Love Simpson in the world premiere of Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree with
Houston Grand Opera, the title role in Picker’s Emmeline for its world premiere at Santa
Fe Opera, Liù in Turandot and Madame Lidoine in Dialogues des Carmélites with Lyric
Opera of Chicago, and Jenufa ° with Washington National Opera. Has also appeared at
Covent Garden, Paris’s Bastille Opera, La Scala, and the Vienna State Opera.

John Del Carlo

bass - baritone

birthplace San Francisco, California

this season Swallow in Peter Grimes at the Met, Alfieri in Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge
with Washington National Opera, and Bartolo in Il Barbiere di Siviglia for his debut with
the Paris Opera.
met appearances Kothner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (debut, 1993), Mathieu in
Andrea Chénier, Bartolo in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Le Nozze di Figaro, Swallow, Don
Pasquale, Alfieri, Quince in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Baron Zeta in The Merry Widow,
and Balducci in Benvenuto Cellini.
career highlights Among his many roles sung with San Francisco Opera are Dulcamara
in L’Elisir d’Amore, Alidoro in La Cenerentola, General Boom in Offenbach’s La Grande-
Duchesse de Gérolstein, Falstaff, Bartolo, and Baron Zeta. He has also appeared with Lyric
Opera of Chicago, Seattle Opera, Covent Garden, Houston Grand Opera, Zurich Opera,
Cologne Opera, and the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

Anthony Dean Griffey

tenor

birthplace High Point, North Carolina

this season Peter Grimes at the Met, Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men at the Fort
Worth Opera, and concert engagements with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles
Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de
São Paulo, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
met appearances Thirteen roles and nearly 75 performances including the First Knight in
Parsifal (debut, 1995) and Sam Polk in Susannah.
career highlights Jim Mahoney in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and Guido
Bardi in Eine florentinische Tragödie at Los Angeles Opera, Mitch in the world premiere
of Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire with the San Francisco Opera, Florestan in Fidelio
with the Florentine Opera, and Peter Grimes with the Santa Fe Opera, Paris Opera, and
Glyndebourne Festival. Additional appearances include leading roles with Lyric Opera of
Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, and Paris’s Bastille Opera. Upcoming are leading roles
with San Diego Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, and Japan’s Saito Kinen Festival.

53
 The Cast and Creative Team continued

Anthony Michaels-Moore
baritone

birthplace Grays, England

this season Balstrode in Peter Grimes at the Met, Germont in La Traviata at the Deutsche
Oper Berlin, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly and Nabucco at Munich’s Bavarian State
Opera, Posa in Don Carlo in Geneva, Falstaff with Santa Fe Opera, Stankar in Stiffelio with
the Vienna State Opera, and Belcore in L’Elisir d’Amore at Covent Garden.
met appearances Marcello in La Bohème (debut, 1996), De Guiche in Cyrano de Bergerac,
Germont, Silvio in Pagliacci, and Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor.
career highlights English National Opera (Zurga in Les Pêcheurs de Perles), Opera North
(Escamillo in Carmen), Glyndebourne Festival (Iago in Otello), the Vienna State Opera
(Scarpia in Tosca, Nabucco, and Rigoletto), Paris’s Bastille Opera (Monforte in I Vespri
Siciliani), Lyric Opera of Chicago (Ezio in Attila), and Covent Garden (Stankar and Macbeth).

Teddy Tahu Rhodes

baritone

birthplace Christchurch, New Zealand

this season Ned Keene in Peter Grimes for his Met debut, the title role of Billy Budd with
Opera Australia and Santa Fe Opera, Al Kasim in Henze’s L’Upupa und der Triumph der
Sohnesliebe in Hamburg, and Lescaut in Manon Lescaut in Leipzig.
career highlights Has sung a number of roles with Opera Australia including Stanley in A
Streetcar Named Desire, Don Giovanni, Dandini in La Cenerentola, Escamillo in Carmen,
Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, and Belcore in L’Elisir d’Amore. He has also sung Stanley
with Austin Lyric Opera, Washington National Opera, and Vienna’s Theater an der Wien;
Marcello in La Bohème and Escamillo with Dallas Opera; the Pilot in Portman’s The Little
Prince, Bendrix in Heggie’s The End of the Affair, and Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di
Figaro with Houston Grand Opera; Papageno in Die Zauberflöte with Welsh National
Opera; and Escamillo with Paris’s Châtelet and Munich’s Bavarian State Opera.

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