Peter Grimes / Peter Grimes Opera Australia
1. THE AUSTRALIAN - Murray Black
"Vocally, Skelton is magnificent. His ringing tonal clarity and resounding power capture his character's resolute strength, while the focused sensitivity and scrupulous dynamic control of his exquisite sotto voce singing create unforgettable moments of searing beauty. When he sang the role in London earlier this year he was favourably compared to the likes of Peter Pears, Jon Vickers and Phillip Langridge. On the evidence of this performance, it was not hyberpole. He really is that good.
2. THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Peter McCallum
"Singing Grimes, Skelton achieves immaculate control and precision without losing the roughness of character. His voice flashes with power yet achieves a mystical serenity in the sustained notes of the great aria Now the Great Bear and Pleiades. Skelton shambles, smiles, loses control, flashes with anger and becomes possessed by the vision that destroys him in a performance that could scarcely be bettered."
3. THE SUN-HERALD - Nicholas Pickard
"Stuart Skelton is born to play the riole of Grimes, his tenor voice opening with such beauty and clarity in the opening scene, only to descend into the more chaotic expressionism as the mob chases him from his hut.
4. THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH - Jo Litson
" Australian tenor Stuart Skeltom had a triumph when he played Peter Grimes for the English National Opera in May. Now he gives a devastatingly good performance for Opera Australia...Skelton is magnificent vocally and dramatically, capturing Grimes' contradictory character: rough, wilful and quick to anger, yet sensitive and boyish, with dreams of a safe harbour with Ellen as his wife.
His final mad aria, in which he looks like a burly fallen angel, is heartbreaking."
5. THE OPERA CRITIC - Sarah Noble
" Stuart Skelton as Peter Grimes gives a performance of explosove intensity. His heavy-set, shambling Grimes is ogre one minute, gentle giant the next, and he sketches out each facet with equally unflinching honesty. His voice is massive, a true Heldentenor, but plumbs extraordinarily lyrical depths: the pianissimo beginning to his Now the Great Bear and Pleiades is a moment of finely-wrought beauty; his mad scene, an astonishing piece of visceral virtuosity."
6. TIME OUT SYDNEY - Jason Catlett
" Skelton's complete ownership of the role for the next decade seems inevitable"
Peter Grimes / Peter Grimes English National Opera
1. MusicOMH.com - Keith McDonnell
" Stuart Skelton in the title role was nothing sort of sensational. Not only was his acting minutely observed but he sang this daunting role with apparent ease. He had the vocal heft to rattle the rafters in the explosive declamatory episodes and the ability to hone his voice down to barely a whisper for the more introspective moments. His mad scene was almost too painful to watch – a stunning performance."
2. THE GUARDIAN - Andrew Clements
"This superb company achievement has Stuart Skelton's towering performance at its heart, perfectly combining human frailties with an edge of brutality and moments of touching poetic insight – probably the most complete Grimes in London since Jon Vickers at Covent Garden in the late 1970s. It is the finest possible tribute to Skelton that he should invite such comparisons in what is a very special ENO show indeed."
3. THE INDEPENDENT - Edward Seckerson
"And the ENO Chorus - nothing short of sensational throughout the evening - are now simply overwhelming. So, too, is Stuart Skelton in the title role. If ever a singing actor combined the elemental force of a Jon Vickers with the crazed inwardness of Pears, it is he."
4. CLASSICAL SOURCE - Melanie Eskenazi
"Pears wrote that “Grimes is not a hero nor is he an operatic villain … He is very much of an ordinary weak person who … offends against the conventional code.” Stuart Skelton embraces that definition both in his singing and his person – at once vulnerable and determined, he sings with touching purity of tone during the lyrical episodes such as ‘Now the Great Bear and Pleiades’ and with searing intensity during his outburst in the ‘Prologue’ and his ‘mad scene’ at the close. Alden has said that Jon Vickers’s performance of the part was “the greatest thing one could ever see” – rightly so, no-one who saw Vickers’s Grimes can ever forget it. Nevertheless, Alden has still managed to elicit from Skelton a reading that respects the influence of his great predecessor yet also embraces touches of Philip Langridge and Anthony Rolfe Johnson. This is not to say it is a derivative performance – far from it, since I don’t think I’ve heard ‘In dreams I’ve built myself some kindlier home’ sung with such poignant fervour."
5. THE OPERA CRITIC - Colin Anderson
"As for Stuart Skelton's Grimes, he is his own man vocally (leaning towards Vickers but tempered by Langridge, and without mimicking either). This is a Grimes whom one feels less pity for, Skelton alive to Grimes's erratic nature, his bluff determination, his despair and his regret; his looming madness is also very well caught (reminding of Tristan's hysteria). Skelton's realisation of 'Now the Great Bear and Pleiades' (Act I) is especially haunting."
6. MUSICAL CRITICISM - Dominic McHugh
"It is, however, a splendid night at the theatre, and even if the production weren't so successful on the whole, it would be worth the trip to the Coliseum just for Stuart Skelton's performance as Grimes. His is truly one of the finest portrayals of any role I have ever seen. Alone amongst the cast, Skelton's performance is complete."
7. MUSICAL POINTERS - Peter Grahame Wolf
"Stuart Skelton assumed the title role with complete assurance, and in a manner which drove out thoughts of his predecessors."
8. WHATSONSTAGE.COM - Simon Thomas
"Dominating all, Stuart Skelton’s towering Grimes is balanced somewhere between the rigorous masculinity of Vickers and the lyrical beauty of Pears and Langridge. The ambiguity of the character is unavoidable – he is undoubtedly both hero and villain - but the final picture of Skelton’s broken fisherman is wrenching and unforgettable. His “God have mercy upon me” (something that echoes hauntingly throughout the rest of the opera) almost literally lifted me from my seat."
9. DAILY MAIL - David Gillard
"Towering in the title role, there is Australian tenor Stuart Skelton. His burly misfit has the power of Jon Vickers without the vocal rasp. Skelton’s Grimes is pure heldentenor, a maritime Siegfried. Verdict: Storm the Box Office"
10. SUNDAY TIMES - Hugh Canning
"It is the Grimes of the young Australian Stuart Skelton - surely the finest on a London stage since the celebrated Jon Vickers - who sets the seal on the evening. His burly frame and heldentenorish timbre do not precude singing of the most inward and eloquent vulnerability in the Great Bear monologue and the Mad Scene."
This Grimes, without doubt, is the must-see operatic event of the entire 2008/9 London season."
11. THE OBSERVER - Fiona Maddocks
"ENO's production is blessed with a magnificent Grimes in Stuart Skelton. Lumbering, vulnerable, bullying, helpless, the Australian tenor radiates a musical intelligence as electrifying as it is heartbreaking. He convincingly unites the visionary, floating lines of the loner desperate for the safe love of Ellen Orford, with the brutal yawls of the thug whose callousness leads to the deaths of his boy apprentices."
12. OPERA TODAY - Ruth Elleson
The Australian tenor Stuart Skelton is as fine a Grimes as you could wish to hear, wielding both his large voice and burly physique with intelligence and subtlety. Emerging from the man-hunt and the subsequent pained calm of the final interlude, Alden's staging of the mad scene is devastating in its simplicity: the surtitle screen and orchestra pit go dark, and Grimes is alone in the abyss beneath a grey and foggy sky. Skelton maximises the effect, the solitude of the setting, with a a performance of heartbreaking vulnerability and emotional intensity.
13. BLOOMBERG - Warwick Thompson
"Tenor Stuart Skelton is a terrific and complex Grimes and creates a blaze of anguish and pain with his huge voice."
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