The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (70 page)

The grimmest and most austere of Britten’s operas, focused on Aschenbach’s interior monologue, conveyed through a recitative that can often seem like little more than rhythmic speech, much of it underpinned by raw piano chords.
In contrast stands the exotic, percussive and pseudo-oriental music associated with Tadzio, symbolic of the spirit of the Greek god Dionysus, whose cult originated in India.
A Venetian barcarole, a series of choral dances (accompanying Aschenbach’s fantasy of Tadzio playing the games and sports of Ancient Greece) and the banal popular songs of a group of strolling players give relief from the brooding, death-directed intensity.

In performance

The opera involves twenty-four short scenes and a host of minor characters (played by a small number of singers doubling up), necessitating simple flexible settings or projections and a lot of teamwork.
The show will nevertheless stand or fall by the ability of the mature tenor playing Aschenbach to make the vocal line expressive and the man’s inner torments externally palpable.
Tadzio is a silent role, usually played by a professional dancer.

Recording

CD: Peter Pears (Aschenbach); Steuart Bedford (cond.).
Decca 425 669 2

Michael Tippett

(1905–98)

The
Midsummer
Marriage

Three acts. First performed London, 1955.

Libretto by the composer

Tippett’s first full-scale opera owes much to
Die
Zauberflöte,
the poetry of T.
S.
Eliot and the philosophy of Jung.
Shrouded in complex mysticism and a clumsy plot, the details of the libretto may be hard to follow or fathom, but the score has a radiant lyricism and energy which is immediately enthralling.
Since its initial hostile reception, the opera has increasingly been recognized as one of the masterpieces of the post-war repertory.

Plot

Midsummer morning, during ‘the present time’: Jenifer and Mark are about to be married, but, outside a temple, they quarrel and separate – she up a staircase (towards disinterested enlightenment), he down into a cave (of his own sensuality and egotism).
Jenifer is pursued by her father, the businessman King Fisher, who is accompanied by his secretary Bella and her mechanic boyfriend, Jack.
Jenifer and Mark return, and Jenifer persuades him to accompany her on another, upward spiritual journey.

Afternoon: With their more ordinary aspirations, Bella and Jack discuss the prospect of their wedding.
From the temple, dancers enact rituals symbolic of the male pursuit of the female.

Evening: King Fisher enlists the clairvoyant Madame Sosostris to help him bring Jenifer back.
Instead, she declaims an oration on the nature of inspiration and creativity, and Jenifer and Mark reappear, transfigured in a blaze of light.
The enraged King Fisher tries to shoot Mark, but he is blinded by the light and falls dead himself.
Following another ritual dance, embodying images of sacrifice and rebirth, the marriage of Jenifer and Mark is finally celebrated in triumph.

What to listen for

Rapturously lyrical in its vocal lines and richly chromatic in its harmonic language, this is a score which seems quite literally to burst into life, and has often been labelled Beethovenian.
Highlights include the youthful ecstasy of Mark and Jenifer’s music in Act I, the blazing colours and energy of the ritual dances in Act II, and the long visionary scene in Act III of Madame Sosostris – a character like Sarastro in
Die
Zauberflöte
or Erda in the
Ring
whose music does seem to embody some deeper wisdom.
The choral writing throughout has a peculiar radiance.

In performance

An opera which deals with the immanence of marvels and wonders just one step behind the surface of the ordinary, everyday world.
Perhaps best understood as a foreshadowing of the sixties hippie movement, and its fascination with transcending visible reality to reach into other states of consciousness and modes of social life – this, at least, was the line followed by Tim Albery at ENO, Graham Vick at Covent Garden and Richard Jones in Munich, the latter in particular providing a funny, touching, inventive and ultimately uplifting production which evoked the dawning of a new age of higher spirituality without sentimentality or corniness.

Recording

CD: Joan Sutherland (Jenifer); John Pritchard (cond.).
Gala GL 100 524

Harrison Birtwistle

(1934– )

Gawain

Two acts. First performed London, 1991.

Libretto by David Harsent

Loosely based on the anonymous medieval poem known as
Sir
Gawain
and
the
Green
Knight,
this is probably Birtwistle’s most popular work to date.
Its subject matter embodies his consuming interest in pagan ritual and mythology.
For the opera’s 1994 revival, Birtwistle substantially cut a long ‘masque of the seasons’, and it is this latter, shorter version which is now considered definitive.

Plot

The court of King Arthur celebrates Christmas, when an unknown knight, clad in green, appears unexpectedly.
He issues a challenge – he will submit to having his head severed with an axe, on the condition that whoever does so will accept a similar blow after a year and a day have passed.

Sir Gawain accepts the challenge and strikes off the Green Knight’s head.
The body of the Green Knight picks up the severed head, which continues to speak, summoning Gawain to a green chapel.
As a masque of the seasons is enacted, Gawain prepares himself for his quest.

Gawain travels forth into the unknown forest and arrives at the castle of Sir Bertilak and Lady de Hautdesert, who tell him that the green chapel is close by.
For three successive days, Bertilak goes out hunting, leaving his wife to attempt a seduction of Gawain.
Every evening, the two men exchange the day’s winnings: a stag, a boar and a fox for three kisses.
On the third day, a frightened Gawain also accepts from Lady de Hautdesert a magically protective sash.
At the appointed time, Gawain presents himself at the green chapel where the Green Knight awaits him.
Gawain bows his head, but two blows of the axe do not injure him at all, while a third only
draws a little blood.
It transpires that the Green Knight is in fact Sir Bertilak and the plot has been hatched by the enchantress Morgan le Fay, who has a grudge against Arthur.
The blood was drawn as payment for his deceit in secretly keeping and wearing the magic sash.

Gawain returns to Arthur’s court.
He refuses to play the hero, and the knights turn from him with contempt.
Gawain has gained self-knowledge, but at the price of being left an outsider.

What to listen for