Peter Grimes, Garnier Paris

(The Orchestra), too, is a highlight of the evening, as conductor Alexander Soddy drives the ensemble before him, translating the score into gestural, theatrical movement. ...Soddy and the fabulously responsive orchestra - virtuosic woodwinds with their numerous demanding figurations, lush brass, sometimes silky, sometimes sinewy high strings - subtly trace Britten's eclecticism, the lineaments ingeniously borrowed from Handel, Puccini, Mahler, condensed in the passacaglia at the end of Act II, the tragic undertow, an allusion to the form and sound world of Berg's "Wozzeck.