leading roles − there were complaints from company members about supposed favouritism and the "cacophony" of Britten's score. Yet when Peter Grimes opened it was hailed by public and critics; its box-office takings matched or exceeded those for La bohème and Madame Butterfly, which were being staged concurrently by the company. Original cast Source: Libretto. Later London productions Sadler's Wells and its successor, English National Opera, staged new productions in 1963, 1990 and 2009. Grimes was played by, respectively, Ronald Dowd, Philip Langridge and Stuart Skelton; the conductors were Charles Mackerras, David Atherton and Edward Gardner. Peter Grimes was staged at the Royal Opera House in 1947, in a production by Guthrie, conducted by Karl Rankl, with Pears, Cross and Edith Coates reprising their roles from the Sadler's Wells premiere. There have been four new productions at Covent Garden since then, directed by John Cranko (1953), Elijah Moshinsky (1975), Willy Decker (2004, a co-production with the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels) and Deborah Warner (2022, a co-production with the Teatro Real, Madrid, the Teatro dell'Opera, Rome, and the Opéra National de Paris). The conductors were, respectively, Goodall, Colin Davis, Antonio Pappano and Mark Elder, and the title role was sung by Pears, Jon Vickers, Ben Heppner and Allan Clayton. In revivals of the earlier productions, Grimes was played by tenors including Richard Lewis, Richard Cassilly, Robert Tear, Langridge, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson. Regional British productions Productions by other British opera companies include Colin Graham's 1968 staging for Scottish Opera, conducted by Alexander Gibson with Nigel Douglas as Grimes; Glyndebourne Festival's first production of the work in 1992, directed by Trevor Nunn and conducted by Andrew Davis and, in revivals, Franz Welser-Most and Mark Wigglesworth; a 1999 version by Welsh National Opera, directed by Peter Stein and conducted by Carlo Rizzi with John Daszak as Grimes; and Opera North's 2006 production, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and conducted by Richard Farnes with Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as Grimes. In the summer of 2013, to mark the centenary of Britten's birth, the Aldeburgh Festival staged its first performance of Peter Grimes. It was played in its natural setting on the beach at Aldeburgh. Steuart Bedford conducted, and Alan Oke sang Grimes. American productions The American premiere of the work was given in August 1946 at Tanglewood, conducted by Koussevitzky's protégé Leonard Bernstein, with William Horne in the title role. The Metropolitan Opera first staged