The first time I heard Peter Grimes was watching a student production during my first year at university, over 20 years ago. It was staged in a church, and Allan Clayton was singing the title role. For Peter’s mad scene, the entire church was dark except for a single lantern Allan was holding. It remains a formative musical memory for me, and while I was fairly new to opera, I bought a CD of Peter Grimes and listened to it constantly. I have wanted to sing the role of Ellen Orford ever since.

Ellen is a fascinating character because she combines great strength with great compassion, and throughout the opera she is a symbol of hope for Peter. She is a widow and the schoolmistress of the Borough, and like Peter, she is in some ways an outsider in the community. She has already lived a life, which we learn very little about in the opera. This is the crux of it for me − she is a real human being.

Her relationship with Peter is based on a deep friendship. I think Ellen seeks a companion, while Peter would like to marry her and build a respectable life, and earn the respect of the Borough. As with all human relationships, their objectives sometimes converge and sometimes conflict, and Britten illustrates this perfectly in their unaccompanied duet at the end of the Prologue. Peter sings in a sort of F minor “The truth, the pity and the truth”, ending on a C flat. Ellen then replies starting on the same note, now a B natural, and sings in a bright, hopeful key of E major. The two continue singing in their respective tonalities, their two perspectives gradually coming closer together, until they eventually converge on an E natural − hope prevails. They conclude the duet in unison in E major “My voice out of the pain is like a hand that I can feel and know: here is a friend”, ending on that hopeful note of E. It’s one of my favourite musical moments in the opera: it’s terrifying to sing because it’s so exposed, but it really establishes the intimacy between Peter and Ellen from the very start of the piece.

Britten uses this device of bitonality − having Ellen sing in one key while those around her sing in a different key − time and again in the opera. It creates a harmonic and dramatic tension between her defiant hope and optimism, and the forces working against her, whether that be the threat of the sea, Peter himself or the Borough. Perhaps my favourite thing to sing in the opera is “Glitter of waves” at the start of Act 2, in which Ellen sings a beautiful soaring melody, emerging from the Sunday Morning sea interlude like the sun dancing on the sea, while we hear church bells, the organ, the rector and congregation and shifts and changes of harmony and tonality in the scene that perfectly illustrate that tension.

The score is so rich with detail, and the closer one looks, the greater the reward. One of the last things Ellen sings is in Act 3, in a short duet with Balstrode, “We shall be there with him.” Balstrode sings this sequence of intervals that we hear elsewhere in the piece: Peter sings the same sequence of intervals in a different key on “God have mercy upon me” and the chorus of the Borough sing it on “Grimes is at his exercise.” In this duet, however, Ellen doesn’t repeat this sequence: she inverts it, almost like a mirror image. To me, this is yet another instance of Ellen’s music showing her defiant, resilient hope and faith in Peter, right until the very end.

I am greatly enjoying the process of preparing the role of Ellen Orford. I’m so looking forward to singing it with New Palace Opera in June, and I’m thrilled to be doing it on stage in my company debut with Opera North in February 2026. I feel so lucky to be able to perform Ellen in concert before I play her on stage − to explore this incredibly rich role twice within a few months is a rare privilege indeed.