The most terrifying moment I know in Western music is the gathering of the mob in the third act of Benjamin Britten ’s 1945 opera, “ Peter Grimes ,” set to open at the Metropolitan Opera on Oct. 16. More than any other, that scene shows how easily human anger and fear can triumph over truth.
Set in a hardscrabble seaside village called “The Borough,” the opera traces the spread of a rumor that a lonely outcast fisherman named Peter Grimes has murdered a series of his young apprentices. The town schoolteacher ( Ellen Orford ) and a retired sea captain (Balstrode), along with the audience, know that the rumor is false and that the boys actually perished in fishing accidents, but they are powerless to put it to rest.