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.
