Maxwell Davies: Taverner

Opera no 82

Peter Maxwell Davies: Taverner

Soloists

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Oliver Knussen

This is a quite extraordinary work. I was aware of it and have some vague memories of the publicity for the first performance: it created quite a stir not only for its subject matter and use of renaissance instruments but also for the extreme modernity of the score. For an English composer to be writing such music in the 1960s (and some of the work was started in the late 1950s) was astonishing. What strikes me more than anything is the confidence with which a still young composer (he was in in his mid 30s when it was produced so much of the music was written in his 20s) mastered his material. The orchestral writing is  completely assured. It must have been an enormous challenge to the orchestra at the time (it sill is hair-raisingly difficult) but it does really pack a punch. Similarly the choral writing has a big impact, especially in the long polyphonic lines in the big ensemble in Act 1.

The solo vocal writing is perhaps harder to appreciate. Some of it seemed to me quite arid in the manner of the least effective bits of late Stravinsky, though elsewhere is was compelling.  Perhaps the most astonishing part of the score is the very end. All of the frenetic activity and hard edges disappears and we are left with a long slow passage for strings which doesn’t compromise in its harmonic language but does seem to hark back in some ways to the traditions of English string writing and beyond that to renaissance polyphony. 

Altogether this was a really good discovery. It was certainly challenging to listen to at times and I am glad I had a score to help me, but I am so pleased that at last I have got round to listening to it.

That’s the end of this part of my exploration of 20th century British opera: I will come back to it later in the year but now I will move on to something much easier on the ear - some of the lighter 19th century French repertoire.

Bennett: The Mines of Sulphur

Opera 81

Richard Rodney Bennett: The Mines of Sulphur

Soloists

Glimmerglast opera

Stewart Robertson

To be honest this didn't leave much of an impression on my either way. I didn't actively dislike it but then again there was very little here that grabbed my attention. It wasn't unattractive in a post-Bergian sort of way but nothing really stood out. It seems to be well paced as music drama and I imagine could be very effective on stage - it had quite a run of early performances after the London premiere but purely as something to listen to I didn't find it engaging. Perhaps only the last few moments - when the cast realised that they are doomed - stood out, but by ten it was too late, both for them and for me!

Tippett: King Priam

Opera 80

Tippett: King Priam

Soloists

London Sinfonietta

David Atherton

I’ve know the music of Michael Tippett since school days - the 2nd string quartet was the first piece of his that I remember hearing. I tried to hear as much of his late music as possible as it came out - I saw The Ice Break at Covent Garden and The Mask of Time at the Proms. I also recall listening to the first broadcasts of String Quartet no 5, The Triple concerto and The Rose Lake. I think that The Midsummer Marriage is one of the great 20th century operas - as for New Year, which I listened to in last year’s project, the jury is still out.

That leaves King Priam. Rather to my surprise I realised that I had never heard the whole work before - the beginning was very familiar as was the war cry at the end of the 2nd act, but much of the rest I had read about and seen the musical examples in the various books about Tippett but hearing it was a new experience.

Priam is the work in which Tippett moved away from the lyricism of The Midsummer Marriage and the concerto for double string orchestra into something much more hard edged. The influence of Stravinsky, especially Agon, is very apparent both in the actual sound of the music but also its mosaic structure. I found it a fascinating work. To me some of it didn’t work. There was too much instrumental ‘doodling’ which didn’t really add anything and the impossible string writing passagework associated with Hecuba seems almost embarrassing. But the material which does work - which is in truth most of it - makes a huge impact. The very start is one of the most arresting openings in all opera and some of the war-like music has real dramatic intensity. But the reflective music also has an eloquence all of its own - I’m thinking here about the song Achilles sings with guitar accompaniment and the wonderful trio for the three main female characters in Act 2.

When I was a student it was almost an article of faith that posterity would see Tippett and not Britten as the major British composer of the second half of the 20th century. That didn’t happen and I can’t see that it ever will. Tippett is such a wildly erratic musical personality but at his best he does belong at the top table. I’ve been rereading the fascinating biography of him by Oliver Soden which is full of insights into a very rich life. Tippett almost dropped completely out of the repertoire after his death but there are signs , mainly though recordings, that there is something of a revival of his music. Let’s hope that that continues.

Walton: Troilus and Cressida

Opera 79

Walton: Troilus and Cressida

Soloists

Opera North

Richard Hickox

The only music from this opera I knew was the big soprano solo At the Haunted End of the Day, which featured in the wonderful documentary of the same name broadcast in the 1980s celebrating the life and work of Walton. 

This was another opera written in the shadow of the operatic successes of Benjamin Britten and it has never quite established its own place in the repertory. Walton tinkered with it several times, including creating a revised version for mezzo soprano in the title role to enable Janet Baker to perform the role. This record restores the soprano tessitura. The music is vintage Walton - it has the swagger of Belshazzar’s Feast and the warm lyricism of works like the violin and viola concertos.  There is real dramatic flair to the score. The correspondence between Walton and the librettist Christopher Hassall has been published and is absolutely fascinating. Hassall had written the book for several of Ivor Novello’s musicals and Walton gently (and sometimes not so gently) coaxed the author into an understanding of what makes a successful opera libretto. 

The score probably did seem a little old fashioned to the critics of the time who often seemed in thrawl to Britten. One can understand that but now with the passing of several generations we can see that both composers in their very different ways had written operas of the highest quality. It does seem odd that Troilus and Cressida has not established itself as part of the 20th century British operatic tradition.

Berkeley: A Dinner Engagement

Opera no 78

Berkeley: A Dinner Engagement

Soloists

City of London Sinfonia

Richard Hickox

I was not much impressed by the Berkeley symphony I listened to in last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/search/label/Berkeley so didn’t have particularly high expectations of this opera. It is quite a short piece (I hr) using the same forces as Albert Herring, That makes sense as it was a commission of Britten’s English Opera Group. For I while I though that the music was pretty inconsequential in a sort of sub-Britten way, without that composers astringency, but as the work went on I found myself more and more engaged with it. Berkeley famous studied with Nadia Boulanger and there are certainly strong French touches throughout the score. But perhaps Stravinsky is the stronger influence - we are certainly not far away from the world of The Rake’s Progess, which was first performed only a few years after this work. There was a highly attractive duet about two thirds of the way through the opera which really made a strong impression.

It must have been difficult for composers of the time to deal with the huge impact that Britten had on post-way opera in this country. Everything seems to exist in his shadow. But I think that this work is strong enough to bear the occasional revival - I certainly found it more enjoyable that the Berkeley symphony I listened to last year.

Tovey: The Bride of Dionysus

Opera no 77

Tovey: The Bride of Dionysus

Soloists

Ulster Orchestra

George Vass

Tovey is very familiar as a writer on music - his Essays on Musical Analysis are still worth reading even though they are now rather dated in style -  but although I knew that he composed I had never heard a note of his music.

I suspected that Brahms would be a major influence and that is undoubtedly the case - indeed the prelude to the opera is almost pure Brahms in places. But there was more to this piece that pastiche Brahms. There were some elements of late 19th century opera - French and German - and the English choral tradition was never far away. This recording was of extracts only, but there was enough here - over 60 minutes of music - to get a sense of what the whole piece might be like. It was obviously by a high competent musician who was in command of his material but I didn’t detect much of a individual voice or oa sense of overall coherence - just a series of quite stylistically varied individual pieces.

The notes with this recording tell us that the opera was considered for performance in the early seasons at Glyndebourne. Those plans never same to fruition - partly because the scale of the work was too large for the small theatre - and it seems that there have been no serious attempts to stage the work again. I suspect that its time has passed. So, another interesting byway of English operatic history.

Brian: The Tigers

Opera no 76

Brian: The Tigers

Soloists

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Lionel Friend

This was a quite extraordinary work.  Its history is quite extraordinary in itself. Brian wrote it during the First World War but only finished the orchestration about 10 years later. The vocal score was published (presumably at the composer's expense) but the work was never performed and the full score was presumed lost until it turned up in the basement of a popular music shop in the 1970s. The opera was recorded by the BBC in the 1980s and I recall hearing a little of it at the time, but this was the first time I had head the whole thing.

It is very difficult to place. It doesn't sound like any British music of its time - but it doesn't belong to any operatic tradition at all. It is a mix of quite modern sounding orchestral effects, some comic elements and some material based on popular songs such as 'has anybody here seen Kelly?'! Somebody described it as almost Ivesian in places and I can see that but the composer who most came to mind when I was listening to this was Tippett - some of the sounds could have found there way into a Tippett opera and indeed the whole surreal atmosphere of the piece, inspirited by a libretto written by the composer, did seem positively Tippettian at times. I really enjoyed listening to this music even though at times I did scratch my head wondering what on earth was going on.

I don't suppose the opera will ever be staged - the vast resources -vocal and orchestral (5 tubas!) would prevent that, and I can't see that it would be a big box office attraction other than an novelty. But I do wonder what would have happened had the opera been performed in the 1920s - just possibly it could have been a sensation and perhaps set opera in English off in a very different direction. 

Delius: Fennimore and Gerda

 Opera 75

Delius: Fennimore and Gerda

Soloists

Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra

Richard Hickox

In last year's project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/02/delius-sea-drift.html I found Sea Drift hard to come to grips with and finished my blog post thus: Perhaps there are treasures in Delius that I will finally appreciate one day, but for the moment he is not on my list of composers that I must explore further.

If there are treasures to come I don't think that they will be found among Delius' operas. I did see A Village Romeo and Juliet years ago and I have to say it was probably the most boring evening at the opera that I have ever spent. This opera had the merit of being shorter but otherwise my feelings were the same. I just can't get on Delius' wavelength. The music seems to drift along aimlessly with some overwrought chromatic harmony which I often find feels almost uncomfortable or worse. There were a few moments when the music settled down a bit into something lyrically attractive but otherwise this was not for me. There are four other Delius operas - three of them early works. I can't think that I will ever want to listen to any of them!  Still this project is all about exploring new things - not everything will come off.

Smyth: The Wreckers

Opera no 74

Smyth: The Wreckers

Soloists

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Odaline de la Martinez

I had included Ethel Smyth's double concerto in the list of pieces I didn't ever want to hear again at the end of last year's project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/02/smyth-concerto-for-violin-and-horn.html so I wasn't expecting much from this opera.

In fact I thought that it was a really good piece - far more impressive that than two previous operas in this part of the project covering 20th century British opera. It is far more in the central European operatic mainstream than either of those pieces and to my way of thinking all the better for it. In fact were it not for the text you wouldn't think it was a British opera at all - and even then it is worth remembering that Smyth originally set the text in French.

There was some extremely dramatic music here - the big scene at the end of the first act in particular make a big impression. But throughout the score Smyth showed a complete command of pacing, with moments of contemplation giving way to high energy ensembles. And the orchestration was completely assured. 

Peter Grimes, another opera set by the coast, was only a generation away from The Wreckers. While that is undoubtedly a much greater work Smyth’s opera can be set next to is without embarrassment. Indeed the sound of the bells in the final scene of this work was a distinct pre-echo of Britten’s use of bells, both in Peter Grimes and elsewhere. I’ll have to find out whether the two compoers ever met and whether Britten knew any of Smyth’s music. 

Boughton: The Immortal Hour

Opera no 73

Boughton: The Immortal Hour

Soloists

English Chamber Orchestra

Alan G Melville

I thought that this was a very interesting work. To be honest I was not expecting very much - just a peice of rather fey fairy whimsy with fairly unsophisticated music. There was some of that but there was also plenty of places where there was real invention and dramatic interest. The harmonic pallet is rich - Delius is the most obvious point of comparison - and the orchestration rich and sonorous - plenty of Cor Anglais throughout. At times it did wander rather aimlessly (another Delius trait) but in other places in commended attention. There were some particularly beautiful offstage choral effects - the end of the first act in particular stood out. But the end, also with an offstage chorus, was the most abrupt ending to any opera that I remember (even including Wozzeck!). The music just disappears - in fact I thought at first that there was a fault on my CD and I had to listen to it again just to make sure!

This opera had a huge impact when it was first performances in London, with an initial run of 216 performances. It is hard to imagine it being successful nowadays, tastes have changes, but perhaps in a very sympathetic production it could still hold the stage. Certainly it has much to commend it. 

Stanford: The Travelling Companion

Opera no 72

Stanford: The Travelling Companion 

Soloists

New Sussex Opera

Toby Purser

This was Stanford's last opera - it was not performed until after his death. I have to say that I thought that it was a pretty mediocre work. Some of it was in  that rather fey 'hey nonny no' folksy style that I find so off-putting in British music of this era. But even ignoring that I didn't find much stylistic coherence to the piece and not much to grip the listener. The whole thing is extraordinarily old fashion for an opera from 1916, and it is hard to imagine that it will ever be more than a curiosity. Oddly enough the last couple of minutes - a gradual wind down towards a quiet ending impressed me more than anything else in the opera, but of course by that time it was far too late. So this is very much one to put down to experience.

Purcell: Dioclesian

Opera no 48

Purcell: Dioclesian

Soloists

English Baroque Soloists

John Eliot Gardiner

After the discussion of the links between English and French music in opera 47 it was inevitable that I would cross back over the channel and taken in some Purcell.  I know  Dido, King Arthur and The Fairy Queen reasonably well but I don't think that I have head any of Dioclesian before.

Purcell's operas (other than Dido) present real problems in performance. They are usually termed semi-operas because the main characters are spoken roles and the music is largely for minor characters, dancing, interludes and choruses. Performances with the complete spoken text would be virtually impossible today. At the other extreme the performance of King Arthur I saw in London some years ago dispensed with dialogue completely and simply presented the music as as series of largely unrelated tableau.

It is of course the music that keeps these pieces alive. While I didn't think that there was anything in Dioclesian which quite matched the supreme moments in the other three works I have mentioned (but then, what does?) there was still some very attractive music here. Perhaps it took a while to get going - some of the early music was a little perfunctory in places but as it progressed there was some really impressive material here, including in particularly some of the music for the soprano soloists.  There is also a bit of the 'hey-noon-no' about some of the opera (nothing wrong with that of course) as well as moment of rare beauty. Purcell's ability to set English words is incomparable - but as I said in opera 47 there are also moments when one could swear that the music was written by a Frenchman!

Vaughan Williams Sir John in Love

Opera no 16

Vaughan Williams Sir John in Love

Soloists

Northern Sinfonia

Richard Hickox

I’ve never quite got on with Vaughan Williams. There are some very special moments across his wide output (the first few bars of the Sea Symphony and the end of the fifth symphony are two that come to mind) but otherwise find that he falls into cliched patterns too often and that after a while all of his music starts to pick the same (heretical view I know).

Vaughan Williams wrote six operas over his long lifetime but none of them have ever held a place in the repertory. This one waited over 20 years for its first professional performance after being first performed by amateurs and performances since then have been very rare. I can understand why. Some of it seems very quaint and old fashioned with a fair bit of ‘hey, nonny no!and it tended to meander along pleasantly but unmemorably for much of the time. You would find some interesting dramatic moments but then these would fall back into the folksong mode which to me quickly becomes cloying. 

Although one can understand why an English composer wanted to write a full length opera featuring Falstaff it was always going to be an uphill struggle when Verdi had already worked miracles with his own opera. 

So that concludes this little series of Falstaffian operas. The two by English composers didn’t really appeal. I enjoyed the others - perhaps the Nicolai most of all. You can see why it is the only one which has retained a place in the repertoire.

Holst: At the Boar's Head

Opera no 15

Holst: At the Boar's Head

Soloists

Liverpool Philharmonic Choir

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

David Atherton

This is a curious piece. It is largely based on melodies from English hill tunes - mainly Playford’s English Dancing Master. Only three of the tunes are by Holst, although all of them are adapted into the musical texture - this is not just a series of popular songs like the Beggar’s opera.  I found it an unsatisfactory piece and I never really found my way into it. It is actually quite congested - there is a lot going on, almost as if Holst wanted to draw attention away from the folk melodies and show that there was more to the piece that those tunes.  There were, as you would expect from a composer of Holst’s distinction, some attractive passages but in the main I felt that the work just rather meandered along. 

Not one for me I think. 

Britten: Owen Wingrave

Opera no 3

Britten: Owen Wingrave

Soloists

City of London Sinfonia

Richard Hickox

Britten’s Owen Wingrave was first broadcast when I was still at school. I have a vague memory of seeing a little bit of the opera but in those days there was only one television set in the house of course, and a full-length Britten opera would have been too much for the family. Since then I have listened to/seen all of the Britten operas except for this one. 

It is a late piece so, as is typical of the composer’s work of this period, the textures are often very thin with absence of the big ensemble pieces that feature in works like Peter Grimes and Billy Budd. Much of the music is in fact almost recitative like though there are some fully developed areas, especially Owen Wingrave’s set piece in Act 2. Britten’s later style fingerprints are all over the score. Distant trumpets, a boys chorus, plenty of isolated phrases in the percussion section and especially the gamelan-like sonorities  which Britten had grown more and more interested in since The Prince of the Pagodas. 

I’m not sure how the whole opera stands up. The libretto seems quite naive and some of the phraseology seems quaint and old fashioned. And some of Britten’s quirks become very tiresome., particularly word repetition. At one point the repetition of the word ‘scruples’ seems almost comic.

Yet for all of this there is some very hunting music in this score. Some of the ensemble writing for women’s voices is very haunting and brings to mind the Do we smile or do we weep ensemble in Peter Grimes. The end is genuinely moving.

The role of old Sir Philip Wingrave was written for Peter Pears. On this recording is was sung by Robin Leggate. He was not trying to imitate Pears but his performance had the unmistakable aura of Peter Pears. That is a sign of how at this stage Britten was so familiar with every nuance of Pear’s voice that he instinctively wrote music that fitted his his vocal personality like a glove.