A story about child abuse and small-town hypocrisy focused on a total social misfit does not sound like a premise for a successful opera. To make a Hollywood movie from this toxic combination, the misfit would need to reform himself through a 12-step program and then single-handedly convert the town into a national headquarters for child abuse prevention.

Nothing so evidently uplifting happens in Benjamin Britten’s tragic opera “Peter Grimes,” but a stellar performance of this complex work can leave an audience with a sense of transformation and even renewal. Saturday (April 18) San Diego Opera opened a dramatically taut and musically vibrant production of “Peter Grimes” that was revealing even to those who know the work well.

What struck me about this production was how much of a parable librettist Montagu Slater crafted from George Crabbe’s long poem “The Borough,” and how Britten’s score elevates this parable to a kind of Barqoue Passion, a feat Britten reprised with a more likely protagonist in his later opera “Billy Budd.”

Like some of the parables in the Christian Gospels, both the religious and secular leaders of “Peter Grimes” are seriously flawed. The Anglican rector is a confused bumbler, and the lay Methodist preacher is a hot-head who is prey to all the sins he decries from his soapbox. The lawyer-mayor favors his own pompous opinions over the law, and the town physician is a quack and a drug dealer. Gossip and character assassination appear to the town’s major occupations after fishing.

Like the Gospel narratives, the women in this opera provide the means of grace. The school teacher helps Grimes care for his new apprentice and is the only villager who sees hope in his unstable character. The tavern-keeper cum madame harbors no ill-will towards anyone and attempts to keep the peace among the irritable townsfolk.

When the four women—including the resident pair of strumpets—sing the achingly poignant quartet “Do we smile or do we weep” to mark Grimes’ final descent after the death of his second apprentice, it is like the somber benediction of a chorale in a Bach Passion. Of course, Grimes is no Messiah, but he is the sacrificial lamb who is instructed to take his own life to satisfy the prejudices and judgement of the populace.

The title role requires a tenor of great range and stamina, which Anthony Dean Griffey has in spades. More importantly, he displays the emotional breadth to encompass Grimes’ tenderness and his wide-eyed but ill-fated aspirations in one moment and then explode in the dangerous pent-up rage that is his fatal flaw. Griffey possesses a pure lyricism at the top of his range that Britten requires for the former traits as well as the Heldentenor bark in his mid-range for the latter. His soliloquy “Now the Great Bear and Pleiades” won our empathy with the sheer beauty of his declamation.

Of next importance dramatically is the opera chorus as the townsfolk, and Chorus Master Timothy Todd Simmons fashioned a mighty, full-throated roar to express the town’s moral indignation (e.g. “Grimes is at his exercise!”) as well as a well-balanced discipline to handle the thorny counterpoint of the “Old Joe has gone fishing” song in the tavern. Like the orchestra’s atmospheric sea interludes, the chorus sets the essential tenor of the opera in nearly every scene. Under veteran stage director John Copley, the choristers caught both the quotidian and the exceptional character of the Borough folk with uncommon grace.

Soprano Jennifer Casey Cabot started off slowly, but by the time she was interrogating Grimes’ apprentice over the strains of the Sunday morning church service sung offstage, she found her stride. Slender in her mid-range, her upper range has a gleam that carries well in the vastness that is Civic Theatre. Her take on Ellen Orford, the school teacher, wisely balanced a critical realism with the character’s deep-set belief that Grimes is not beyond redemption.

As Captain Balstrode, Grimes’ would-be mentor, baritone Rod Gilfry offered a gruff eloquence vocally and kept his bearings when the townsfolk became aroused over Grimes’ behavior. Bass-baritone Kristopher Irmiter appeared to be having too much fun as town physician Ned Keene, giving him a dandified jollity with a warm, well-projected vocalism whose clarity of understanding needed no assistance from the supertitles. John Del Carlo’s petulance was perfect for Mayor Swallow, although his robust bass-baritone seemed to fray at the edges as the opera progressed.

Tenor Greg Fedderly pushed an atttractive voice a bit much as the perpetually outraged Methodist Bob Boles. Mezzo Judith Christin reprised her role (from San Diego’s 1984 “Peter Grimes” production) as Auntie, the tavern-keeper, with great authority but less ease of production. Sopranos Priti Gandhi and Priya Palekar gave pleasant, clear voices to Auntie’s “nieces” and lavished the requisite body language to indicate their professional calling.

The unfailing logic of John Copley’s pacing and movement ensured that everything onstage was as clear and purposeful as Britten’s magnificent score, conducted with great insight by Copley’s fellow Brit Steuart Bedford. Copley’s connection with this opera goes back to a 1949 Covent Garden “Grimes” production where he was the mute apprentice. A lifetime of directing has honed his skills and instincts to make his “Peter Grimes” the gold standard.

Steuart drove the orchestra hard, and at times his heroic concepts mitigated against a more balanced, refined sonority. But no one could claim his “Grimes” lacked visceral excitement or dramatic zeal.

The set from Lyric Opera of Chicago invoked the drabness of the East Anglian coastal village with apt naturalism, and it handled the crowd scenes particularly well. Grimes' dangerously perched hut high at the back of the stage enhanced the claustrophobic danger his unfortunate home symbolized. And Gary Marder's lighting, especially in the storm scenes, was quite spectacular.

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