Experience the power of the sea in music inspired by the majesty and mystery of the ocean. Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes is one of the 20th century’s true operatic masterpieces, and the sea is a character all its own in the tragedy. The interludes and passacaglia from the opera vividly depict the sea at dawn, in moonlight and whipped up into a storm. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony was one of the first symphonies to use a chorus throughout, setting poems by Walt Whitman that explore the basic questions of existence and the sea as a symbol of the innermost self.