Peter Grimes to take his boat out to sea and sink it. Grimes leaves. The next morning, the Borough begins its day anew, as if nothing has happened. There is a report from the coastguard of a ship sinking off the coast. This is dismissed by Auntie as "one of these rumours." Notes Cited sources Other sources Peter Grimes Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from the narrative poem, "Peter Grimes", in George Crabbe's book "The Borough". The "borough" of the opera is a fictional village which shares some similarities with Crabbe's, and
Benjamin Britten it had coloured everything he had written since. Colin Matthews comments that the next two works Britten composed after his return, the song-cycle "The Holy Sonnets of John Donne" and the Second String Quartet, contrast strongly with earlier, lighter-hearted works such as "Les Illuminations". Britten recovered his "joie de vivre" for "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" (1945), written for an educational film, "Instruments of the Orchestra", directed by Muir Mathieson and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent. It became, and remained, his most often played and popular work. Britten's next opera, "The Rape of Lucretia",