Working Out

Noi and I finally did it: we hit the gym and walked home to tell the tale. In fact, we walked home to eat Noi's famous oxtail soup and it was extra-famous somehow after all the exercise. We both feel virtuous - and replete. What larks!

A bit more on Peter Grimes: the original libretto included material on Grimes as sexual predator, preying on the workhouse boys who are forced to assist him. This angle was never part of Crabbe's original poem The Borough, the basis of the opera. Britten & Pears decided to get Slater, the librettist, to excise these references, though I presume it was they who had originally encouraged their inclusion. At least I think this is what took place based on material I've seen recently on the Internet. (In his fine book Britten in the Master Musicians series, Michael Kennedy mentions none of this stuff regarding the development of the libretto though he does discuss the extent to which Britten's homosexuality informs the character of Grimes as outsider.) I can't help but feel that some of the power and complexity of Grimes himself derives from this 'missing' material, and also some of the discomfort we experience in responding to his character. I'm made to feel even more uncomfortable here at the absurd equating of homosexuality with paedophilia that seems to be implied in all this. I don't think the opera's creators have really got any of this under their control, and that's wonderful because the opera passionately lives as a result.

By the way, I'd completely forgotten that Kennedy's book was on my shelf until this evening so now I'm spurred to listen to the opera again in the light of the pretty detailed commentary provided by Kennedy. Good exercise for the ears. Let's hope I hear things better the next time round.