Seiji Ozawa and stage director David Kneuss, the team renowned for bringing many celebrated works to the stage, created a sensation with their 1996 production of the opera Peter Grimes at America's Tanglewood Music Festival. Since then, it has already been six years.

Britten's masterpiece, set in an English fishing town, depicts the story of Peter Grimes, a mysterious man caught and suffering in the currents of tradition and convention. The revival of this work in Matsumoto and Florence will be Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto's first co-production with the prestigious Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

Leading singers from North America will join the tenor, Anthony Dean Griffey, who sang the title role in the Tanglewood production. The Saito Kinen Orchestra's performance will paint the bleak North Sea backdrop. And chorus master, John Oliver will lead the voices, powerful like giant waves rolling in, of the Tokyo Opera Singers and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. With these forces combined on stage, everyone will be moved by this soulful tale that bears the oppressive and abstruse theme of confrontation between group and individual.