Scott Cantrell

Opera yielded nothing to wide-screen thrillers for gut-wrenching drama Saturday afternoon, and even in a movie theater.

Peter Grimes, the latest installment in the Metropolitan Opera's live, high-definition video transmissions to movie theaters worldwide, hit AMC Northpark Center with explosive power.

The titular fisherman's struggle with inner demons, and with small-town cruelty, played out all across Anthony Dean Griffey's twitching face and multitextured tenor. But the whole panoply of village pettiness and hypocrisy, set against the sturdy decency of schoolteacher Ellen Orford and veteran sea captain Balstrode, was vividly realized in the new Met staging by British director John Doyle.

Premiered 63 years ago, Peter Grimes was Benjamin Britten's first serious opera – and the first British opera to become an international repertory staple. (That it hasn't been done by the Dallas Opera in 28 years is a scandal.)

Though based on a tale by the turn-of-the-19th-century writer George Crabbe, and set in an 1830s British seaside village, the opera is a thoroughly modern exploration of moral ambiguity.

Grimes may or may not have been responsible for the deaths of two young apprentices. But clearly he's a man torn between poetry and madness, between physical abusiveness and dreams of domestic respectability. Ellen tries to stabilize him and fend off the persecutorial villagers, but with the crescendo of Grimes' schizophrenia she resigns herself to tragic fate.

Cliches of bad opera acting are certainly laid to rest in this emotionally devastating production. Even in supersize close-ups, in stunning video quality, these are singers whose every facial tic means something. Designer Scott Pask sets the action in front of an oppressive wall of weathered black boards, doors opening to reveal various dramatis personae. Victorian costumes are by Ann Hould-Ward.

Mr. Griffey is the very personification of Grimes' cornered-animal paranoia as well as would-be tenderness and flights of unhinged poetic fantasy. The voice roars in rage, but also croons in velvety, out-of-body dreaminess.

Both vocally and physically, Patricia Racette (a University of North Texas alum) invests Ellen with rich nuances of care, alarm and finally resignation. Anthony Michaels-Moore is the similarly decent Balstrode, with a well-groomed baritone and crisp British diction.

The village's hypocrites are vividly portrayed: the windbag lawyer Swallow by the sonorous John Del Carlo; the slimily seductive druggist/quack Ned Keene by Teddy Tahu Rhodes; and the in-your-face moralist Bob Boles by Greg Fedderly. Felicity Palmer maybe overdoes the busybody Mrs. Sedley, but it's refreshing to see Jill Grove play the pub proprietress "Auntie" less as a low-rent madam and more as a sensible woman who's seen it all.

The chorus made sounds by turns awesome and atmospheric in the Saturday matinee, only occasionally struggling with Britten's odder turns of phrase. Led by conductor Donald Runnicles, the Met orchestra gave a performance as dramatic, and dramatically precise, as the cast.

It's too bad the backstage interviews by soprano Natalie Dessay were so inane. Right after the wrenching drama of act one, we really didn't need her walking up to Mr. Griffey to ask him what it was like to portray Grimes.

• Repeats at 2 p.m. today at nine theaters in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. For information, go to: www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/ broadcast/hd_events.aspx.

ARCHIVES: Search for more stories on this and other topics | Search Tips

SUBSCRIBE: Get The Dallas Morning News delivered to your home