FROM AROUND THE WORLD: PARIS.(Review)

Seen on April 24, Peter Grimes was one of Graham Vick's least successful productions for the Opera de Paris. In an attempt to offer a new perspective on the work, he uprooted it from the bucolic Suffolk seaside community Britten knew so well and, with the complicity of designer Paul Brown, thrust the story into a late-twentieth-century British seaside society of hooligans and decay. Not only did this miserable, Expressionist world of low-grade work and social deprivation lack maritime poetry; more destructively, it compromised the claustrophobic world that so confined and influenced the composer.

The opening court scene took place in a contemporary school, with the villagers uncomfortably seated on tiny children's chairs. Was this meant to suggest the undertones of child abuse in the work? Whatever the reasons, the hanging mobiles and ugly, curtained-off set only evoked a parent-teacher evening that had gotten badly out of hand. Later, Ellen Orford was seen taking refuge with Auntie in a gray Volkswagen Golf, while villagers scrawled "slut" on its windows.

This effort to move Britten's master-piece toward Berg's Lulu was misguided; Britten is about repression, not expression. The stifling atmosphere of borough life in Grimes is the whispering malignancy of the society; aggressive vandalism would horrify any Mrs. Sedley. It was greatly to the credit of Della Jones that in such circumstances she managed to create a character of haughty Anglo-Saxon disapproval with her tightly permed hair and shiny plastic mackintosh, even if her vocal tone is wearing thin these days.

No such deficiency marred Stephanie Blythe's outstandingly sonorous Auntie. More barmaid than publican, this young tart with a heart was touching in her dramatic solidarity with the young Ellen of Susan Chilcott. Despite her clinging jeans and good looks, the English soprano managed to suggest the right mix of schoolmarmish correctness with just a whiff of sexuality. Her singing was tremendous, rising to heights of power and eloquence in the embroidery aria, which can be a little mawkish in lesser hands.

After his performances in a series of wonderful concerts of Wagner at Covent Garden and Paris Opera, hopes were riding high that Ben Heppner would be the Grimes of one's dreams, but the promise was only partially fulfilled. Despite some wonderful moments of bronze-toned power and a welcome straightforward approach to the phrasing of the monologues, Heppner needed a more sympathetic director to bring the role to life. Edgar Evans, who shared the role with Peter Pears in some of the early performances at Covent Garden, always said that to be successful as Grimes, you had to find the obsessive quality of the role. Although physically Heppner looks the part, he remains his usual avuncular self, with too many ineffective hand gestures and a curious would-be fisherman gait. Comparisons with Jon Vickers are inevitable, and certainly Heppner negotiated the high tessitura of the cabin scene, here set in a mobile home, with more ease than his great predecessor; but dramatically, there is sadly no comparison. In the mad scene, Vickers appeared to be a man dispossessed of the right to live, while Heppner seemed only puzzled.

However, this crucial scene did not lose its power, thanks to the experienced Captain Balstrode of Alan Opie, whose bearded fisherman seemed to come from another set of production values. His rock-solid singing and perfect treatment of the spoken text ...