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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Peter Grimes
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(1945) Opera by Benjamin *Britten which set post-war British music off to a flying start with its first performance at Sadler's Wells in June 1945. The story derives from The Borough (1820), a long poem by George Crabbe about life in his home town of Aldeburgh. Britten links two of Crabbe's characters: Peter Grimes, a solitary fisherman whose obsession with his work causes him to mistreat the boys he takes on as apprentices; and Ellen Orford, the schoolmistress who tries to befriend him. After two of his apprentices have died in accidents, local hostility to Grimes is so great that he is persuaded (by now himself in an unbalanced frame of mind) to sail his fishing boat far out to sea and to end his life by scuttling her. The richly atmospheric orchestral passages which punctuate the drama have become popular independently as Four Sea Interludes.
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