# Is "King Priam" Tippett's Masterpiece?



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Are there any fans here of Michael Tippett's "King Priam"? This piece is next on my 'listening desk' and I'd like to know how many consider it a masterpiece. But first here are 5 short commentaries:



> *1) The work in one sense is everything so many people dislike about the dreaded term ''modern opera.'' The music is modal and chromatic, not serial in organization but dry and tuneless, given to insistent, eerie recitative and spare, sharp bursts from isolated instrumental groups, the brass and percussion predominating. Although Stravinsky, Orff, Honegger, Milhaud (the whole panoply of composers of so-called epic opera around 1930) can be evoked for comparison, this remains a score that will seem empty, even actively unpleasant - unless one pays attention.
> 
> -- John Rockwell*






> *2) The music is very uneven in its inspiration. Act One is dominated by a predictable neo-classicism - harmonically stark, melodically dry, orchestrally brassy, as if in self-conscious denial of the gorgeous, expansive, dotty lyricism which allows "The Midsummer Marriage" to get away with its nonsense. Act Two, barely half an hour, unclogged with Brechtian devices, is superb: suddenly, the opera finds its own pulse and personality, moving in one confident sweep through Achilles' beautiful song of nostalgia (accompanied by guitar) to a thrilling grand opera climax. But the lean muscularity, the vitality and virility, the boldness of colour falters again in Act Three, which starts with an immensely tedious scene for the ladies (cel- los, and a plangent note). The crucial confrontation of Priam with his son's slayer Achilles doesn't fulfil all that has come before: some big aria ought to be there, something to pull it all together; instead there is disintegration. This opera is, in my opinion, far from being the masterpiece it is cracked up to be.
> 
> -- Rupert Christiansen (1991)*






> *3) Tippett himself called it "spare, taut, heroic and unsentimental" - to which adjectives one might add abrasive and astringent, too. Influenced by Stravinsky's neoclassicism and Brechtian ideas about epic theatre, this is unapologetically high art on a challenging theme - the terrible consequences of our moral choices - and from its opening urgent alarum to its closing doubtful unease, Tippett clothes it in richly complex and sternly adult music, not one note of it either meretricious or pretty
> 
> -- Rupert Christiansen (2012)*






> *4) Tippett's selective, often compelling and mostly well-structured take on Trojan War myths will never capture the wider public's imagination as much as even the least of Britten's operas [.....] And I don't want to be told to "feel the pity and the terror" of war if the music, for all its harsh ingenuity, doesn't make me do so. The vocal phrases are too relentlessly declamatory and hard-edged, in any case.
> 
> -- David Nice*






> *5) Having succeeded in the romantic wing, Tippett proceeded into classical environs for King Priam (1962), which bids fair to be one of those flawed operas that outlasts its time, its flaws forever being cited and its wisdom forever touching the soul. Only a minority opinion would claim it as Tippett's masterpiece.
> 
> -- Ethan Mordden*


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Trust you to nominate one of the few Tippett works I've never heard at all heh heh... I've read that it's possibly his best opera but have rarely, if ever, been aware of this accolade being upgraded to meaning his best work ever. 

Perhaps I've been deterred by the opera's story in conjunction with the musical style that Tippett had developed by then - although Tippett's more austere textures work well with the more modern settings of the two operas I've heard in full (The Ice Break and The Knot Garden) I wondered if this style could breathe new life into a well-known ancient mythological subject, however much Tippett tweaks the actual story with his own libretto. Then I remembered what Stravinsky did musically with Oedipus and Britten with Lucretia so I can't really justify why I've held back on this one. Dangerous things, preconceptions...


----------



## Pip (Aug 16, 2013)

The World Premiere was given by the Covent Garden company at the Coventry Theatre - 29th May 1962, as part of the celebrations for the reopening of Coventry Cathedral. Produced by Sam Wanamaker and designed by Sean Kenny. It was conducted by John Pritchard.
The opera transferred to the Royal Opera House in London where it was successfully revived in 1963, 1967, 1972, 1975 and 1985.







This was the cast of the world premiere - taken from the original programme







I saw the 1967 and 1975 revivals and still consider this to be a very good opera indeed, second only to his
Midsummer Marriage. It is very difficult to see it performed these days, although the DVD of the Kent Opera production from the 1980s is still available.
On CD the Chandos set is as good as it gets.







Conducted by David Atherton, who conducted some of the CG revivals and with a Cast including Norman Bailey, Thomas Allen and Phillip Langridge - this is an opera worth exploring.


----------



## Oreb (Aug 8, 2013)

Not for me. I like it a lot, but if it's going to be his masterpiece it should include all the things that make him a 'master' (that's assuming he was, which I'm not sure about...)

Tippett had a gorgeous lyrical streak, all through _The Midsummer Marriage_, that _Priam _jettisons. I realise it does this for very good dramatic reasons, but by leaving out such a significant part of the composer's sound-palette its not really showing what he was capable of.


----------



## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

I personally prefer "The Ice Break".


----------



## Pip (Aug 16, 2013)

I would say the opposite - After Midsummer Marriage he goes onto Priam showing a completely different "sound palette", this shows his capabilities even more. With his subsequent operas "Knot Garden" and the "Ice Break" he never really returned to that 
lyricism first shown in MM.
Although the parallels are not quite so clear, there are similarities with the case of Schoenberg, who after composing "Pelleas", totally gave up the romantic vein and went wholeheartedly into 12 tone.


----------



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Thanks everyone.

Btw, my title should have simply read: _Is King Priam His Best Opera_.

As a follow up here are two reviews from this past week in The Independent and Financial Times:

1) "There are Tippett aficionados who regard King Priam as his finest stage work. It is undeniably an ambitious piece, optimistically engaging with a large chunk of Homer's Iliad and addressing lofty themes of human choice and responsibility, all rolled up in the composer's own over-reaching libretto, but this is an opera that is very hard to love"

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/16d66190-9880-11e3-8503-00144feab7de.html#axzz2tkzwONPV

2) "Non-hard-core Tippettians should be warned. The relentless, rebarbative angularity of the melodic lines can be purgatory for the ears; for all his strenuous craftsmanship, Tippett never attains even a whiff of beauty"

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...iam-english-touring-opera-review-9133918.html


----------

