Among the greatest triumphs of 20th-century musical theatre, Peter Grimes returns in a new production by Robert Carsen, marking the La Scala debut of Simone Young, a conductor at home in the world’s preeminent theatres who built her reputation as conductor of the Hamburg State Opera.
The disturbing story is taken from the narrative poem The Borough, where George Crabbe relates the distorted dynamics of a small community distressed at the death of the cabin boy of a fisherman named Grimes, an isolated and aggressive character interpreted at La Scala by Brandon Jovanovich.