Peter Grimes 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 later Britten's, own home of Aldeburgh, a town on England's east coast. It was first performed at Sadler's Wells in London on 7 June 1945, conducted by Reginald Goodall, and was the first of Britten's operas to be a critical and popular success. It is still widely performed, both in the UK and internationally, 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",