This really shouldn't be filed under 'opera', because it is an oratorio, but I saw it this evening staged by English National Opera. Just one other performance, a week today.
I have to say that I hope it is never staged again. An interesting experience, but one that failed abysmally. It was written as an oratorio. I'm sure if Michael Tippett had intended it to be an opera, he would have written it as such. Or requested that it be staged at some point in his long life. He started writing it in 1939, it received its debut in 1944. He died in 1998. Tonight was the first ever staged performance. I have no doubt that ENO chose to perform it this week because it is approaching Holocaust Memorial Day.
I do not know the work, and I now feel that I have been depriving myself all these years. The two years below me had this on their O-Level music syllabus. My year and that before me had as their modern British work Arnold's Scottish Dances. My sister's year had Horowitz's Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo (not as good as Summer Sunday, or indeed Cinderella, which my brother and I saw the composer conduct). I think the years that studied this were jealous of us, because they really didn't like it. And I can't understand why. There were at least two school parties there this evening, probably no more than 11 or 12 years old.
It combines the structure of a traditional oratorio - Messiah, St Matthew Passion - with modern (at the time) music. A light jazz influence here, spirituals there. I wonder if the Spirituals he used were already popular, or whether this work help to popularise them into the folk hymn books that emerged in the 70s.
Performance wise it was at its most powerful at the end, when the soloists assembled at the front of the stage, with a static chorus behind them, close to the traditional performance of oratorio. The least effective aspects was when there was movement round staging. Wholly unsatisfying staging, utterly two dimensional, and with its University Dramsoc feel it seemed just to trivialise the desperately serious subject matter. The sight of actors wandering round in off-white underwear was most distracting. I prefer my actors to be fully clothed or fully naked. I can't stand off-white underwear.
There was some inexplicable use of trap doors. At one stage an actor was placed in a tomb, and then a tree was planted. It finished with most of the chorus standing on squares of turf looking for all the world like they had been sold off from a football stadium about to be shut down.
The house lights were completely down, so it was impossible to read the libretto, yet the singing did not sufficiently enunciate the words so there was no meaning, and the staging was meaningless.
I paid £22.50 for an indifferent seat and 75 minutes of performance from an eminently competent, but not world-class chorus and soloists and with no view of the audience. Tomorrow night gives me, at £27, a very good seat for the 75-minute Beethoven's 9th with a couple of internationally-renowned soloists, a world famous conductor, and Beethoven's 8th thrown in for good measure. I already know what will be better value for money.
To conclude, the singing was okay - Timothy Robinson in particular, who I have repeatedly found to be a very good oratorio singer. At the beginning the chorus were annoying me with what sounded like very sloppy 'sh's'. I'm sure I was only in Infant School when I was taught the importance of watching the conductor to ensure that all 'sh's' (or 't's) are pronounced simultaneously so that the audience does not hear a continuous 'sh'. Perhaps it was done deliberately for effect, perhaps it was even written that way. Either way, it sounded bad.
To conclude - I'm glad I made the effort to be introduced to the music, and I intend hearing it again. But in future I shall stick to a proper concert performance, because it is, after all, an oratorio, not an opera.
The Bach Choir and Philharmonia are performing it on 11 May. I already know it will be vastly superior. This has now been added to my 'to book' list*. This year is Tippett's Centenary.
* note to self: along with Dido and Aeneas and Silete Venti - no I've never heard of it either...
Update: The Times already has a review, which broadly concurs with mine.
