PETER GRIMES

Peter Grimes is on trial. The reclusive fisherman is not very popular with the villagers and is said to be responsible for the death of his apprentice - at least that's what the village community believes. However, Grimes cannot be proven guilty, the trial ends with neither a guilty nor an acquittal - and the stigma remains. Then a sudden new misfortune threatens to escalate the interpersonal tensions.

In his tone-painting opera debut, Benjamin Britten paints a merciless, bleak world in which people have to wrest their survival from the sea and a deviation from the norm can mean the difference between life and death. For him, it was "a subject very close to my heart: the struggle of the individual against the crowd. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual". A social study, a drama about collective and individual guilt - and a milestone in English music history.