Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten. It was first performed in 1945. It is generally thought to be the most important British opera of the 20th century. It is about a community in a small fishing village in the east of England in the 1820s. Peter Grimes is a fisherman who feels that the people do not want to have anything to do with him. He wants to make lots of money so that he can marry and get people’s respect. In his obsession with catching as much fish as possible he is cruel to the boys who help him (his apprentices), and they die. At the end of the opera Grimes drowns himself.