Fire in the Belly

When Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten's dour saga of a doomed fisherman, was first produced at the Metropolitan Opera in 1948, one patron was so outraged that he spat through the box-office window. Badly sung, unimaginatively staged, poorly conducted, the opera sank with barely a ripple.

Last week the Met revived Peter Grimes, and this time it was smooth sailing. Tenor Jon Vickers sang the title role with complete conviction; Director Tyrone Guthrie's staging was fittingly roughhewn and seafaring. But for most of the audience, the true center of interest was the Met debut of British Conductor Colin Davis. One of the world's top young maestros, Davis, along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Zubin Mehta and the Berlin Radio Orchestra's Lorin Maazel, is among the front-running candidates to succeed Leonard Bernstein when he steps down as musical director of the New York Philharmonic in 1969.

Underlying Waves. No glamour boy on the podium, Davis guided the Met orchestra through Britten's surging score with the firm and unerring hand of a ship's captain riding out a sou'wester. His precise baton gave full play to the music's quick, dramatic climaxes, while deftly sustaining the rhythms of wind and waves. His beat was decisive, his attack well balanced and logical.

A sturdily built, wavy-haired man with a Mozartean profile, Davis has about him an air of modesty that is all but unknown in his ego-happy profession. He disdains publicity, regards the rantings and ravings of fellow conductors as a bloody bore. "At the Met," he says, "they seem surprised that I don't get excited or demented. But I feel it's important not to work yourself up in rehearsals. If you do, then there is nothing left for the performance."

Years ago, when he taught himself his trade by beating out rhythms to accompany phonograph records, he even refrained from watching himself in the mirror as most conductors do. He was worried that he, like so many others, might "become entranced with myself."

Odd Glimpses. Back in London such attributes have endeared Davis to the music fraternity, and he is universally praised as the finest conductor to come out of Britain in 30 years. He began as a clarinet player with the Glyndebourne Orchestra, moved to the Sadler's Wells Opera as principal conductor in 1960 and distinguished himself with his command of the Mozart, Stravinsky and Berlioz repertory. Calm and controlled in action, Davis is respected by his musicians as "one of the few English conductors with real fire in his belly."

Now 39, Davis lives in a modest century-old house in London with his Persian wife Shamsi and their two-month old son. In September, he will become musical director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the youngest conductor ever appointed to the prestigious job. Not surprisingly, he scoffs at the accent on his youth. He insists that he is already experiencing "the odd and beautiful glimpses of objectivity" that come with advancing years. "When you are young you are attacked by music as a disease, and you try to get something out of it that it can't possibly give. The older you get the more you find that simple answers are always the best."

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