Peter Grimes - libretto changes

[LeMartinPecheur]

Tonight, to follow the R3 broadcast of PG from Vienna I reached down a recently acquired junkshop copy of the libretto, Boosey & Hawkes 1945. But throughout there were significant differences from what we actually heard, and from what is printed in the CD set of HMV excerpts from the original production, my only recording with a libretto. Sometimes this was just a word or two changed, but there were also bigger changes suggesting that BB had at a very late stage told Montagu Slater that he needed some sizeable rewrites.

For example, right at the end of the opera my libretto prints the three chorus quatrains beginning "To those who pass the Boro' " in one block, with nothing following save "During the Chorus the CURTAIN slowly falls", when as we hear it these are interspersed one verse at a time between the final words of Swallow, Auntie and Boles.

Can anyone please explain how a libretto came to be issued for public consumption that doesn't match the composer's final score??

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Slater was greatly disillusioned with how Britten used his work - and published his complete original libretto as a separate poem after the opera premiered.

Details provided in this excellent book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Benjamin-Britten-Grimes-Cambridge-Handbooks/dp/0521297168/

[Mary Chambers]

I switched last night's broadcast off because I didn't like the Grimes. I listened to a bit later on, and it sounded as if it would be dramatic in the theatre. There was something uncomfortable about it, though.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Slater was greatly disillusioned with how Britten used his work - and published his complete original libretto as a separate poem after the opera premiered.

Details provided in this excellent book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Benjamin-Br...dp/0521297168/

Thanks fhg. Did Slater really publish this version through Boosey? I can quite see that he might publish his original as an independent literary work through his literary publisher, but what I've got is Boosey and Hawkes, clearly marked on the front with BB's name, no sign of MS's. Is it significant that it is 'Coyright 1945 in USA by Boosey & Hawkes Ltd. Copyright in all countries'?

There is a prose summary of the plot at the start and its final two para's suggest it came out a little while after the first performance (could this be Slater writing? - it's unsigned):

"It remains to add a note on the form of the libretto and its setting. The form - a four beat line with half rhymes - seemed appropriate for the quick conversational style of the recitatives. The prologue however is written in prose.

"In the original production by Sadlers Wells we indulged in a calculated inaccuracy in the setting... [the shift from late C18 to early C19]." (My emphases.)

I guess the libretto might have gone off for printing while the composer was still deeply engaged with setting it, but that doesn't fit with the above indication that the preface post-dates the first performance. So I'm still puzzled!

EDIT What I've got isn't Slater's final 'literary' publication - according to Kildea that came out in 1946.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

EDIT What I've got isn't Slater's final 'literary' publication - according to Kildea that came out in 1946.

Yes - available for a penny (+ P&P) of you want to compare:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peter-Grimes-other-Montagu-Slater/dp/B001MUC7ZI/

I haven't seen either publication - and can't find my copy of the Philip Brett book on Grimes which made the differences between Slater's conception and Britten's (and the resulting falling out - which IIRC [a big "if" therein] didn't stop Britten from asking Slater if he'd be interested in providing a libretto for The Rape of Lucretia) - so cannot comment on how B&H came to publish a libretto that didn't match exactly that used in the Opera.