Clouds are gathering over Welsh National Opera (WNO), where funding cuts threaten the future of its larger productions, said Richard Morrison in The Times. The case for keeping them going is well made by WNO's terrific new staging of "Peter Grimes": it's a reminder that if you want a "full-blooded" operatic experience, then "you need the clout of a proper orchestra and chorus". In Melly Still's atmospheric staging, the "razor- sharp playing and spine-chilling singing" of the company's threatened orchestra and chorus bring Benjamin Britten's "still startlingly atmospheric 1945 score" wonderfully to life.
"Peter Grimes" is the tragic story of a lonely, alienated fisherman in a small town on the Suffolk coast, who is responsible for the death of one young apprentice and then for another. Still updates the story from around 1810 to a "callous, tacky 1980s community", and creates a setting that is "symbolic, surreal and stylised": an upturned fishing boat hangs ominously over a largely bare stage.
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