Limited edition of Britten’s acknowledged masterpiece, presented by the composer to the soprano Joan Cross who created the leading female role in the opera of Grimes’s defender and ally, Ellen Orford. From an unknown very small limited edition created for presentation only (seemingly no copy in the Britten Pears Library) this is ‘copy No 3.. presented to Joan Cross [by] Benjamin Britten’. Laid in is the original programme for the premier which was staged on June 7th, 1945, barely a month after VE Day, at the newly reopened Sadler’s Wells theatre. Cross has annotated her vocal part with stage directions, musical emphases and changes to the libretto; substantially in Act III as Ellen remonstrates with Peter over taking his last apprentice to sea. Short of Britten or Pears’ copy of this limited edition coming to market this is the best possible copy of this most important of English operas.
DESCRIPTION: Quarter brown goatskin over printed paper covered boards; rubbed to outer hinges and edges of boards. Mottling to lower cover. Marbled endpapers with offsetting where items have been laid in; some cracking to paper over inner hinges. Limitation page on thicker paper stock precedes title page; a little spotting to early leaves. Cross’s annotations begin during the first Sea Interlude with a crisp ‘Exit’ which took her off the stage following the Prologue trial scene. Further annotations are scattered through the printed score around Cross’s role of Ellen Orford: emphases and phrasing are picked out in pencil by Cross as Ellen remonstrates with the Borough (p61) ‘Let her among you without fault cast the first stone...’ with later instructions in Cross’s hand to ‘stand fast’ (p65), she has left extensive annotation to ‘Glitter of Waves’ (p178) including emendations to note lengths and details of the word setting (p187). Cross has annotated the crucial scene where Grimes strikes her character in anger (p205) and at the end of Act II indicates that her line crosses over with the Two Nieces and they swap vocal lines. Ellen’s meditation on the Apprentice boy’s jersey found on the beach, ‘Embroidery in childhood was a luxury’, is extensively annotated with reminders to sharpen certain notes, additional details of phrasing, dynamic markings, reworkings of the word-settings and emphases on open vowels.
CONTEXT: Britten’s Peter Grimes is the abiding masterpiece of his creative output and of English opera as a whole. Joan Cross (1900-1993) was an English soprano who during the second world war undertook the management of Sadlers Wells Opera Company, reopening their London theatre with the premiere of Peter Grimes on June 7th 1945. She was involved thus in the managerial practicalities of bringing Britten’s opera to the stage as well as creating the role of Ellen Orford on stage. Before retiring from singing in 1955 she would go on to create the role of Elizabeth I in Britten’s Gloriana and Lady Billows in Albert Herring. In later life she lived in Britten’s Aldeburgh and is buried near the composer in Aldeburgh churchyard.
