Peter Grimes relations with his apprentice to be bordering on paederastic, Pears persuaded Slater to cut the questionable stanzas from the final version. The opera was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundations and is "dedicated to the memory of Natalie Koussevitzky", wife of the Russian-born American conductor Serge Koussevitzky. When Joan Cross, who was then manager of the Sadler's Wells company, announced her intention to re-open Sadler's Wells Theatre with "Peter Grimes" with herself and Peter Pears in the leading roles, there were many complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the "" of Britten's score. Yet when "Peter Grimes" opened
Peter Grimes and Jonathan Summers. In 1967, the Metropolitan Opera mounted a "landmark" production directed by Tyrone Guthrie and starring Jon Vickers in the role of Grimes. In the summer of 2013, the Aldeburgh Festival staged a performance of "Peter Grimes" in its natural setting on the beach at Aldeburgh with tenor Alan Oke in the title role. A Suffolk coastal village, mid-19th century (The date is not specified, but the foghorn in Act III places it later than the date of Crabbe's poem) Peter Grimes is questioned at an inquest over the death at sea of his apprentice. The townsfolk, all