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
Scottish Opera including the Barclays TMA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera for "Macbeth" and "Der Rosenkavalier" (both in 1994) and for "Die Walküre" and "Siegfried" (both in 2002), as well as the South Bank Show Award for "Best Opera" for the "Ring Cycle" (2004) and a Herald Angel Award for "The Two Widows" at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2008. Scottish Opera has also staged many successful productions abroad, including "Albert Herring" in Florence, "Egisto (opera)" in Venice, tours in Germany, Austria, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Yugoslavia and Iceland and recent years including "Peter Grimes" and "Tristan und Isolde" in Lisbon; "Macbeth"