Christopher Gray witnesses a collaboration between stage and screen

In an important first for English National Opera, the company has teamed up with Altive Media for a live relay on Sunday of its hugely acclaimed production of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. Following in the footsteps long paced out by New York’s Metropolitan Opera and more recently by Covent Garden, ENO is fortunate indeed that it is measuring up to these major rivals with work of truly world-class quality.

First given in 2009, the production of Britten’s pioneer large-scale opera, dating from 1945, is directed by David Alden and conducted by ENO’s music director Edward Gardner. The title role is taken, as before, by the Australian heldentenor Stuart Skelton. His is perhaps the most significant achievement on display at the Coliseum. A bulky, stage-dominating presence, he supplies a compelling study of the ambitious fisherman, whose efforts to reap the harvest of the sea appear to be so lethal for his apprentices. As with Oscar Wilde on the subject of parents, his loss of one followed so quickly by the death of another starts to look like carelessness. Or worse. Villain or victim? Even the supportive Ellen (beautifully sung by Elza van den Heever) comes to doubt him.

If victim, we are given insightful portraits of those ranged against him in the seedy, morally bankrupt Borough, which is here updated from the early 19th century of George Crabbe’s source poem to a period approximate with the work’s composition.

The stylised decadence of Alden’s vision includes a cross-dressing lawyer Swallow from bass Matthew Best, Dame Felicity Palmer’s laudanum-guzzling Mrs Sedley, and a markedly manly pub landlady, Auntie, in sharp-suited Rebecca de Pont Davies, whose naughty nieces, Rhian Lois and Mary Bevan, are understandably the principal attractions of the Boar.

In a production not short of thrilling sound, including that from the well-drilled ENO chorus, there is nothing to beat what is encouraged from the orchestra by Gardner in the great Interludes that punctuate and complement the action. These explore both the troubled mind of Grimes and the many moods of the sea against which he struggles for survival.

Peter Grimes
London Coliseum
Until February 27
Box office: 0207 845 9300, eno.org
Streamed live to cinemas across the country on Sunday. For information go to eno.org/enoscreen