Five-star reviews for Allan Clayton’s Peter Grimes
Allan Clayton has earned another wave of five-star reviews for his performance in the title role of Peter Grimes in revival at Royal Opera House, directed by Deborah Warner and conducted by Jakub Hrůša.
'Who can turn skies back and begin again?” That’s the question the fisherman Peter Grimes asks the universe at the close of his brief aria in Act 1 of Britten’s opera – two and a half minutes of singular, breath-holding music, at the end of which the people around him all think he’s mad or drunk, but we the audience know he’s a man apart, who sees more clearly than any of them. For someone who runs his life by watching those skies, the words are as succinct as they are beautiful – and there’s a simplicity to the way Allan Clayton sings them that encapsulates the balance of directness and poetry in his Grimes, a role in which he currently has few rivals.’
The Guardian *****
‘At the centre of the drama, Allan Clayton confirmed his status as the Grimes of the moment. No one else currently brings such a compelling combination of vocal clarity, stamina and dramatic intensity to the role. His tenor cut cleanly through the orchestral textures, bright and focused at the top but capable of a harder edge when needed, but it was the psychological detail that compelled: this was a volatile, often unsettling Grimes, never softened or sentimentalised.’
musicOMH *****
‘If Langridge was the heir to Peter Pears, then he has passed the torch to Allan Clayton, the British tenor who plays the title role, coaching him in the part in what has now become an era-defining interpretation of the role... Allan Clayton’s performance as Peter Grimes that is worth the price of admission on its own. He brings a terrifying sense of dramatic realism to the part, embodying the desperation and damaged emotional landscape of the character that mirrors the destructive power of the sea.’
London Unattached *****
‘The show belongs to Allan Clayton, who has somehow deepened the frail intensity of his Grimes. He sings with a lustre and poetic imagination that clashes all too palpably with the twitchy, tortured figure who lashes out at his haters and his supporters alike. Two moments stood out for me this time. First, the flicker of hurt and bafflement on Clayton’s face when Ellen suggested he’d struck his apprentice. And then when that traumatised apprentice (Johnny Imbrailo, aged nine), has to turn into a father figure himself, wordlessly laying his hand on Grimes’s head to try to calm him. Two lost souls, clinging on.’
‘Allan Clayton’s performance bleeds visceral melancholy, his voice at once razor-sharp and emotionally raw, always anchored in his character's fractured psychology. What makes it truly remarkable is how Clayton holds the darkness and the light. Beneath Grimes's paranoia and guilt, a flicker of hope for salvation still burns in his feelings for Ellen Orford, a widowed teacher. “I’ll marry Ellen” he repeats to himself, each time becoming more distorted as the hope fleets away.’
‘A vehicle for Allan Clayton, who is now established as one of the greatest singers of Britten’s music in the world... In a programme book interview, Allan Clayton mentions that the first time he sang Grimes was when he was still a chorister at Cambridge; the performance was so close to the end of Evensong he had to sing the latter in his costume. Clayton’s reading of the role has moments of raw lyrical power, swerving into what we might call the Jon Vickers and Stuart Skelton traditions of the role... But what makes this a real tour-de-force – still one of the most completely realised vocal and dramatic revelations of a character on the opera stage I have ever seen – is the memory of that chorister in his sound – floated, ethereal, unearthly, and fragile, as he tries to walk the passaggio tightrope of ‘Now the Great Bear and Pleiades’. He is a poet about to fall into the abyss, teetering on the brink, with Clayton finding a remarkable mix of registers on that treacherous note, so beloved by Peter Pears... What makes Grimes’ tragedy so unbearable is the way Clayton’s performance summon evokes that image of a child chorister too – as frightened, damaged and vulnerable as the young boy who ends up dead at the foot of the cliff in the opera. The mad scene is still astonishing, not least for the timbral adventures Clayton took us on – rasping and guttering, slipping wearily off the voice, introducing bends in tuning and pitch that could belong to contemporary repertoire as much as that of the twentieth century.’
‘With Clayton, you don’t have to choose between the English-song Grimes of Pears or Rolfe Johnson and the craggy power of a Vickers or Skelton; you get them both. The song-simplicity of “Now the Great Bear” and “In dreams I’ve built myself” meets the muscular power of the confrontations: his Sunday morning confrontation with Ellen, his mad-scene self-loathing.’
‘I believe nobody, even Pears, has taken all those quiet Es so glowingly as Allan Clayton is this May. When Clayton repeatedly sings the word “Who?” (even now I can hear how Vickers pole-vaulted his way up to each repetition – he made the strain eloquent), we hear the visionary rapture, the pathos, and we feel the private honey.’
‘At the centre of the storm is Allan Clayton’s vocally resilient Grimes, his tonal quality maintaining exceptional beauty, especially in the Now the Great Bear and Pleiades aria...
‘British tenor Allan Clayton is magnificent in the title role, just as he was when this production directed by Deborah Warner first appeared four years ago. This time he is even better, conveying both the outward hostility of Grimes and the inner anguish behind it.’
