A quick drive over to a quiet place on the east coast of Norfolk for a little product photography didn’t go according to plan. Quite often the final week of May feels like summer, but last weekend we had a surprisingly chilly east wind. Growing up on this side of England you’d think I’d be used to it. Actually one year in my teens I remember being on the Suffolk coast when it snowed on the 3rd of June! So I should have known better,
but we were caught out.
Christmas morning, it was clear skies and a light wind on the East Norfolk Coast, but when we crested the brow of the dunes the sea was unexpectedly rough.
No Christmas swimmers, but plenty of dogs ran backwards and forwards into the retreating surf.
Sometimes people have grand ideas that never come to fruition, but luckily those amazing people involved with the opera production of ‘Grimes on the Beach’ for the 2013 Aldeburgh Festival brought us a dramatic and memorable evening. Despite the myriad of difficulties associated with staging an opera outside on a beach, seeing ‘Peter Grimes’ on this specific beach where the fictional action takes place, was mesmerizing.
Grimes on the Beach – a dramatic yet poetic staging.
Our evening was enhanced by arriving in a thick sea mist that came and went during the performance when the weather changed as dusk turned to night.
The sea mist engulfs the coastal path walking into Aldeburgh.
Britten’s music evoking the sea and the Suffolk coast, a particular coast of shifting shingle, has always been significant for me especially during my time living away from East Anglia. I am a girl of the grey sea and the huge skies, and hearing the waves breaking on the shingle in the quieter passages of this tragic opera was enchanting.
Grimes on the Beach with the North Sea as the backrop. Aldeburgh Festival 2013
It was a brave decision to mark the centenary of Britten’s birth with this ambitious production and I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing to thank and congratulate the soloists, chorus and orchestra members, and all the production team for this spirited and successful work. Bravo.
The sea glimpsed through the staging.
Fishing boat partly submerged in the shingle.
Darkness and the stage is lit.
The hardy souls of the audience during the second interval.
Agnes Ashe 