Prom 45 - 16.08.13: Tippett – The Midsummer Marriage

[aeolium]

I enjoyed the opera, the first time I had heard it complete (previously I had heard the Ritual Dances and some excerpts) and love some of the orchestration. I agree with what some others have said about preferring Tippett's earlier work. The interval talk about the work was interesting. I wonder whether Tippett's decision to take T S Eliot's advice about writing his own opera librettos was wise; perhaps he could have benefited from a sympathetic librettist who could have absorbed the ideas Tippett wanted to incorporate and provide something more coherent (at least the plot sounded as though it had taken the incoherence of the Magic Flute plot and multiplied it!) But as Mary said, perhaps it would help to see it staged.

I am now interested in exploring the Colin Davis recording of the work.

[LeMartinPecheur]

This to me is pretty much a desert island choice. Fell in love with its sound-world probably via the Ritual Dances which IIRC were pretty often performed (live and recorded??) on R3 in the 70s and 80s (why not now?). Guess I must have heard full performances of the opera, live or recorded, then too. I snapped up the Davis Lyrita CDs years ago which confirmed this for me as a magical, deep, mysterious masterpiece well worthy to sit with Zauberflote its inspiration.

Was therefore absolutely gutted to miss last night's broadcast owing to a family dinner Still, I did manage to hear the work once live, in a semi-staged performance at the St Endellion Festival. Only slight problem there was that their Jenifer went sick at the last minute, no substitute could be found, so her role was sung an octave down (maybe two in places?) by the tenor chorus master, who also conducted the somewhat complex chorus-writing in places

Passionate duets for two tenors - very Monteverdian

[Stanley Stewart]

Fascinated to read this thread after, generally, a blanket silence on the work of Tippett. Listening to last night's broadcast of TMM, I was aware that I'd attended an earlier PROM performance but couldn't find the programme and was reluctant to take The Henry Wood Proms (David Cox, BBC hardback, 1980) off the shelves knowing that a basic query would probably lead to several hours of extended reading. Couldn't resist having a shufti, this morning, and, indeed, TMM was performed in 1977 (a double-jubilee year - the Queen's Silver Jubilee and the 50th anniversary of the BBC's take-over of the Proms).

"Four of the concerts had the title 'Contemporary Masterworks'...They were Henze's The Raft of the 'Medusa',
'a popular and military oratorio' dedicated to Che Guevara; Tippett's first and perhaps greatest opera, The
Midsummer Marriage, in which (if anywhere) he achieves fulfilment of ' a vision of wholeness'; Messiaen's
Turangalila Symphony ('the play of love' - love that is fatal, irresistible, transcending all); and Luciano Berio's
Coro (different modes of setting to music - displaying diverse techniques from many cultural sources)...."

Can't recall the production sources of TMM but somehow associate Welsh National Opera. During the past few years, I've been assembling a portfolio of Tippett's work including an off-air video to DVD of "TMM" recorded from C4 in 1988. A fine production by Elijah Moshinsky in which he cleverly opened-out the narrative to outdoor locations - a first rate cast: David Wilson Johnson (King Fisher), Philip Langridge (Mark), Sarah Walker (She Ancient), Roger Bryson (He Ancient) and Janet Suzman as the character of Sosostris. Running time: 2 hrs 43 mins.

Off- air video/DVD: "New Year" (1991) - eventually had to acquire a libretto! However, my favourite remains the Kent Opera production of "King Priam", conducted by Roger Norrington, strong visual images, too. There was also room for the 60 mins "Songs of Experience", a profile of MT (1991), on the same DVD as "King Priam" runs to 129 mins. Indeed, extra space for a 25 mins John Freeman "Face to Face" with MT - so articulate and fascinating.

CDs include the ROH, TMM,Colin Davis, a two CD set of the String Quartets, 1 - 4 (The Britten Quartet) and "A Child of Our Time", Royal L'Pool PO/John Pritchard. And, of course, MT's autobiography "Those 20th Century Blues",(1991) thoroughly engaging even at its most twee! Some valued gold dust here.

[mercia]

according to the proms archive, Act 2 of TMM had been performed in 1963 and 1971

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive/search/work/the-midsummer-marriage/4367

[Bert Coules]

I was at the second of those act two proms: good grief, was it really forty-two years ago? I got to know the work through the Colin Davis recording on LPs, with Alberto Remedios in radiant form as Mark - a Siegfried who could sing lyrical coloratura! - and Helen Watts as Sosostris, though I've never got around to buying the CDs: I must check and see if it's still in the catalogue. I missed the latest prom, alas.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I've never got around to buying the CDs: I must check and see if it's still in the catalogue.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tippett-Midsummer-Marriage-Sir-Michael/dp/B000025ZJT/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1376917515&sr=1-1&keywords=tippett%2C+midsummer+marriage

I missed the latest prom, alas.

Still on the i-Player, Bert:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0385gq7/BBC_Proms_2013_Season_Prom_45_Prom_45_(part_1)_Tippett_The_Midsummer_Marriage/

[Bert Coules]

Thanks for that. I've now heard (and much enjoyed) act one of the Prom performance. And I see it's to be repeated tomorrow, so I might try to catch the rest as it goes out.

[Maclintick]

I enjoyed the opera, the first time I had heard it complete (previously I had heard the Ritual Dances and some excerpts) and love some of the orchestration. I agree with what some others have said about preferring Tippett's earlier work. The interval talk about the work was interesting. I wonder whether Tippett's decision to take T S Eliot's advice about writing his own opera librettos was wise; perhaps he could have benefited from a sympathetic librettist who could have absorbed the ideas Tippett wanted to incorporate and provide something more coherent (at least the plot sounded as though it had taken the incoherence of the Magic Flute plot and multiplied it!) But as Mary said, perhaps it would help to see it staged.

I am now interested in exploring the Colin Davis recording of the work.

The Colin Davis recording is marvellous, & one needs to make little or no allowance for the age of the recording - originally Philips (1971) & later re-licensed to Lyrita for CD re-release. The uncredited, presumably Dutch, engineers produced a beautifully transparent, tonally accurate sound in Wembley Town Hall which it would be hard to better today.

As you infer, Aeolium, there can have been fewer examples of bad advice dished out to a composer by an undisputably great poet than that proffered to Michael Tippett by T.S.Eliot when he encouraged him to eschew the example of Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Strauss, Debussy, Puccini & Britten in employing a competent librettist, & instead to follow the singular (?) example of Wagner, whose lines strike me as devoid of literary & poetic merit ( ditto MT's )

[edashtav]

The Colin Davis recording is marvellous, & one needs to make little or no allowance for the age of the recording - originally Philips (1971) & later re-licensed to Lyrita for CD re-release. The uncredited, presumably Dutch, engineers produced a beautifully transparent, tonally accurate sound in Wembley Town Hall which it would be hard to better today.

As you infer, Aeolium, there can have been fewer examples of bad advice dished out to a composer by an undisputably great poet than that proffered to Michael Tippett by T.S.Eliot when he encouraged him to eschew the example of Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Strauss, Debussy, Puccini & Britten in employing a competent librettist, & instead to follow the singular (?) example of Wagner, whose lines strike me as devoid of literary & poetic merit ( ditto MT's )

Hear, hear, McClintick. If ever there ws a composer who needed external help to clarify and codify his ideas it was Michael Tippett. T S Eliot may have cost us two or three great Tippett operas!

[Master Jacques]

I agree with the other posters who were there on the night - This Midsummer Marriage was a fantastically beautiful "occasion", the rehabilitation of a great opera which has been too long away from the Proms. The last complete performance of it at the Royal Albert Hall was in 1977, the Welsh National Opera cast conducted by Richard Armstrong - who was there, incidentally, along with a noticeably large number of his fellow conductors, who obviously all considered it a "must-hear". No words could be too enthusiastic, either, for Sir Andrew Davis's conducting, which combined loving indulgence and dynamic precision in equal degree.

By the end he, and nearly everyone else in the hall (on both sides of the "footlights") was simply grinning for the pure pleasure of the thing. Fabulous libretto, fantastic music, wonderful performance, opera doing what it does best - pure magic!

Let's hope this kick-starts a Tippett revival: not least for the chance to hear again and re-evaluate those late works such as the dystopian space-opera New Year, which seemed to me at the time not so much 'with it' as 'premonitory'. The Suite (available on Chandos CD under Richard Hickox) certainly contains music just as clear, dynamic, rich and strange as anything, even in Midsummer Marriage.

Such a generous spirit....

[Flosshilde]

Quite. I'm not really qualified to comment, since I only listened to the first hour or so (the Monteverdi Choir's Bach on television lured me away), but from what I heard the word-setting sounded poor, though the performers coped admirably. I haven't read the libretto, so it was impossible to follow what was going on in spite of the synopsis given beforehand. In other words, I hadn't done my homework, so I'd better shut up.

I listened this afternoon (to most of it) & enjoyed it as much as I did when I first heard it in 1971 or '72 when it was broadcast. I don't know if it's what you meant, Mary, but I found the text very clear & could follow what was being sung - more than I have been able to in many English operas (or operas in English).

[bluestateprommer]

I enjoyed the opera, the first time I had heard it complete (previously I had heard the Ritual Dances and some excerpts) and love some of the orchestration. I agree with what some others have said about preferring Tippett's earlier work. The interval talk about the work was interesting. I wonder whether Tippett's decision to take T S Eliot's advice about writing his own opera librettos was wise; perhaps he could have benefited from a sympathetic librettist who could have absorbed the ideas Tippett wanted to incorporate and provide something more coherent (at least the plot sounded as though it had taken the incoherence of the Magic Flute plot and multiplied it!) But as Mary said, perhaps it would help to see it staged.

Some may be interested to read an "outsider" (read: American) review of this Prom, namely George Loomis in the New York Times, where he addresses, without intending to, one or two of aeolium's points:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/arts/music/tippetts-first-opera-is-staged-at-royal-albert-hall.html

While I haven't read a bio of either Britten or Tippett, I have a sneaking suspicion that with Britten, since others generally wrote the libretti for his operas, he was more free to focus on the music, though I generally have no doubt that he communicated regularly with his librettists and that there was a lot of give-and-take regarding the text. In other words, Britten was a "fresh pair of eyes" for his librettists in that collaborative sense. With Tippett, however, since he was both composer and librettist, he had no outsiders to provide a more detached perspective on his work, to say what might work and what might not. It's the same criticism that I've read about Walt Whitman's poetry, namely that Whitman thought that everything he said must be right, because he said it. I wonder if the same sort of near "hubris" applies to Tippett. Maybe one day I'll settle that if I read a bio of him.

But back to the event at hand, namely this Prom. On the main, IMHO, it went quite well, with generally a fine cast and the BBC SO on very good form, occasional momentary slips aside. The weakest link for me was David Wilson-Johnson as King Fisher, where I thought that he overacted and overdid the bad-guy act more than once. Perhaps Ailish Tynan is just too bubbly a person and singer to believe as a character, here Bella, who would be happy to sit at home, wash the dishes, and take care of the kids, but all praise to her for being willing to step in as a substitute at what seems like the last minute. But the catch, overall, with this work is, I'm afraid, the libretto, as so many have commented here and in the past. Some of the lines just make you (read: me) go "whaaatttt?". The quality of the music does tip things very much in the other direction, but there are times when it's a close thing. I haven't heard the Colin Davis recording in a while, so I don't know if the cuts to the text in this performance are the same ones as in the recording. I have a copy of the ENO guide to Tippett's operas, which has the uncut TMM libretto.

Incidentally, per aeolium's and MC's comment, FWIW, I have seen TMM staged, the 2005 production at Lyric Opera of Chicago that Loomis mentioned in his review. Sir Andrew Davis conducted it then as well, with Sir Peter Hall as director. The conceit framing the production was that a supernumerary was on stage in a bed, doubling for Mark, so that the opera basically came across as Mark's dream. To be honest, that doesn't really help to clarify the weirdness and opacity of the text, but you can kind of rationalize the weirdness and opacity that way, since dreams don't necessarily make logical or linear sense. While I'd have to dig up my copy of the program, if memory serves, Catherine Wyn-Rogers was the Sosostris in Chicago as well, so that's another element common to both these performances besides Sir Andrew Davis. I remember that more than a handful of people left at each intermission then, which mirrors what seems to have happened in London. Still, I'm glad that I saw that production in Chicago, as well as hearing this Prom on iPlayer.

[Maclintick]

Some may be interested to read an "outsider" (read: American) review of this Prom, namely George Loomis in the New York Times, where he addresses, without intending to, one or two of aeolium's points:

Incidentally, per aeolium's and MC's comment, FWIW, I have seen TMM staged, the 2005 production at Lyric Opera of Chicago. I remember that more than a handful of people left at each intermission then, which mirrors what seems to have happened in London. Still, I'm glad that I saw that production in Chicago, as well as hearing this Prom on iPlayer.

Thanks for this, BSP. Your first-hand description of the Chicago Lyric production of Tippett's Midsummer Marriage is welcome, as it didn't receive many column inches in arts coverage this side of the pond. George Loomis's NYT review of this problematic work's recent Proms outing is just, & adds to a sense that if the oxymoronic term "flawed masterpiece" has any meaning, then it applies in spades to Tippett's first opera.

The opacity of the text must be a nightmare for directors, & when such a vastly experienced and distinguished dramaturge as Sir Peter Hall feels driven to invoke a somnolent supernumerary - what Hitchcock would have called a "McGuffin" - to impose some coherence on the enterprise, then you realise he may as well have gone for broke & set it on a raft in Lake Michigan.....

You ask if Whitmanesque "near hubris" applies to Tippett's penchant for writing his own libretti ? Well, there are commentaries on the composers life and work, but we're still waiting for anything like a definitive biography to explore such questions thoroughly. Tippett did write an autobio, unlike Britten, which some may see as evidence of hubristic inclination, but in person he was delightful & inspiring company, not in the least egotistical, & if any label could be applied to his approach to life and composing it would be that of "ploughing his own furrow" with tough-minded certainty and consistency, through years of public indifference.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I love The Midsummer Marriage, including its libretto - which, as the 1985 ENO production demonstrated needs no McGuffin to make it a wonderful opera: uplifting, funny, unsettling, gloriously barmy and distinctly moving. It's a work that's part of that whole "Festival of Britain" atmosphere of post-war optimism which I treasure; no need to preface the "masterpiece" with any caveats, least of all "flawed" - the libretto's no worse than Trovatore and considerably better than some of the amdram texts that others wrote for some of Britten's equally magnificent operatic works.

[Richard Barrett]

I love The Midsummer Marriage, including its libretto

I think the received wisdom that Tippett was wrong to think he could write his own librettos needs some reappraisal. I only know the first three of his operas reasonably well but I would say in each case the text and music are all of a piece and, crucially, the way the text is conceived follows the stylistic transformations of Tippett's music in a fascinating way that would be missing if one or more external librettists had been involved. Tippett's music is structurally rough-hewn, sometimes stylistically incongruous, expressively complex and idiosyncratic; and so are his libretti (and, for example, the sung text in the 3rd Symphony). For me the text and music of King Priam especially form a unity which absolutely requires their having been created by the same person, and the same is true to a hardly lesser extent of The Midsummer Marriage and The Knot Garden, and probably the later operas too. For me, both the texts and music of Tippett's operas make Britten's look perfunctory and threadbare. I realise this will be a minority view but there it is.