Peter Pears had been specifically composed for the soprano voice. For Pears, Britten composed one of his most popular works, the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (1943). In early 1943 Pears joined Sadler's Wells Opera Company. His roles included Tamino in "The Magic Flute", Rodolfo in "La bohème", the Duke in "Rigoletto", Alfredo in "La traviata", Almaviva in "The Barber of Seville", Ferrando in "Così fan tutte" and Vašek in "The Bartered Bride". His growing operatic experience and expertise affected the composition of Britten's opera "Peter Grimes". The composer had envisaged the central figure, based on Crabbe's brutal fisherman, as a
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