 His growing operatic experience and expertise affected the composition of Britten's opera "Peter Grimes".The composer had envisaged the central figure, based on Crabbe's brutal fisherman, as a villainous baritone, but he began to rethink the character as "neither a hero nor a villain" and not a baritone but a tenor, written to fit Pears's voice.In January 1944 Britten and Pears began a long association with the Decca Record Company, recording four of Britten's folk song arrangements.