an outright bully, "untouched by pity, unstung by remorse and uncorrected by shame". Three of his apprentices in succession have died before he is summoned to the Town Hall to account for his conduct, after which he is forbidden to employ another. He works alone until the ghosts of his victims begin to terrorise him and he sinks into madness and dies in bed. In Crabbe's poem, Ellen Orford's tale is completely separate from Grimes's and they are not mentioned as meeting each other. The Rector, Swallow, and the proprietress of the Boar inn, "Auntie", and her nieces derive from other sections of The Borough, but other characters in the opera, including Balstrode, Boles and Ned Keene, are not in Crabbe's original. While Britten and Pears were waiting for a passage back to England, the conductor Serge Koussevitzky asked the composer why he had not written an opera. Britten explained that doing so would necessitate putting all other work aside, which he could not afford to do. Koussevitzky arranged for the commissioning of the opera by the musical foundation he had recently set up. The fee was $1,000, and the opera was to be dedicated to the memory of Koussevitzky's wife, who had recently died. Britten approached his friend the writer Christopher Isherwood, inviting him to write the libretto. Pleading pressure of work and some reservations about the effectiveness of the subject, Isherwood declined. London: 1943−1945 During the voyage back to England, Pears continued to work on the scenario of the opera while Britten composed A Ceremony of Carols and Hymn to St Cecilia. The story, and Grimes's character, underwent substantial changes in the early stages of drafting. For a long time during the gestation of the work Britten conceived Grimes as a baritone role. Pears persuaded Britten to play down any emotional tie Grimes might feel to the apprentice, and play up his position as an outsider in an intolerant society. At first, Britten had Grimes murdering his apprentices rather than being at worst negligent. For some time the dénouement had Grimes on the marshes, going mad and dying there. An episode with smugglers was dropped and several characters were gradually eliminated as work progressed on the story. By the time Britten and Pears returned home in April 1943 the shape of the work was not greatly different from the final version, and to turn the scenario into a