Arts
Tippett at the top
Rodney Milnes
The Ice Break (Covent Garden)
Opera is so complex a system of communication that audiences tend to take what is given to them at face value. Thus 150 years of ingenious scholarship have been wasted on the famous Magic Flute plot-change simply because people believed, the Queen of the Night to be telling the truth (whereas examination of the music shows that she is lying in her teeth); and Verdi has been accused of writing 'bad' music whereas he was merely fitting his music to the situation — most notably in the party scenes of La Traviata, where his writing is flashy, vulgar and heartless because he is describing flashy, vulgar and heartless people. So if the heart sinks when reading in Sir Michael Tippett's libretto for The Ice Break, his fourth and (he says) last opera, lines like 'What's bugging you man? Cool and jivey once; now touchy and tight. You're a drag . . . ' it is as well to note that the composer is gazing with a mature and not unjaundiced eye at the inane posturings of youth today and its lemming-like eagerness to conform to boring and dated stereotypes.
This, too obvious to be termed an apercu — more of a reminder — makes one want to re-read the composer's earlier librettos, which have come in for a hammering over the years. That for The Ice Break seems to me faultless. It is extraordinarily economic, fluid and resonant, and it calls out for music — indeed can scarcely be said to exist without it. The music is similarly economic: three acts each under the half-hour. Illinformed comment on this in the nonmusical press has been ludicrous; such brevity of utterance, here allied to Tippett's unique density of thought, is surely essential in art today. There is no time for more.
The density is indeed bewildering. The Opera deals with the generation gap and attitudes to race, oppression and nationality, both per se and as symbols of the divisions in the human psyche. Lev, after twenty years in (presumably) Russian labour camps, is freed to join hiswife Nadia in (presumably) the US and the son he has never seen. Wife and son are alienated, wife because of the adjustments necessary in her adopted land, son because his father's sufferings mean nothing to him. Son's American girl-friend (from whose mouth the lines quoted above fall all too trippingly) is besotted with liberal guilt and lust for a black hero-figure. Both are killed in a riot, and the son is gravely injured. While Nadia dies (operatically, of no stated cause) black hero's black girl-friend nurses son back to Physical health — rebirth, rather — and reconciliation with father.
Lev, the father, has the last words, quoted from Goethe: 'Yet you will always be brought forth again, glorious image of God, and likewise maimed, wounded afresh, from within or without.' The element of optimism in that is variable. Now Tippett is not one to take anything so fatuous as sides, but it seems to me that he is an immensely wise man who differentiates between real and imagined suffering, between deeplyheld beliefs and mere attitudes, yet also a man who shows more compassion and patience with posturers than might, say, a middle-aged journalist from Gloucestershire.
As for the music after one hearing, I would only say that it is not every new opera that you want to hear again as soon as possible certainly not every new opera to have been heard recently in London. Tippett's mastery (and, again, economy) of instrumentation remains spell-binding, and his characterisation through vocal writing in set numbers hits the nail with unnerving accuracy. Heather Harper (Nadia) and John Shirley-Quirk (Lev) seize their opportunities with stunning singing of difficult notes. The most immediate grateful role is that of the nurse, who has the only extended lyrical outburst: this was delivered with wonderful tenderness by Beverley Vaughn, a young mezzo making her debut and plainly a remarkable singer and personality. She, more than the son, is the character that develops.
There is a conventionally operatic quartet that sounded at first a little too conventional — watch this space — and the angularity of some of the recitative fell less than easily on the ear. But the aftermath of the riot left the father and the bereaved nurse wordless and alone on stage with the orchestra saying all there was to be said; it is a truism to say that that is what opera is for, but I can think of few composers who have used the basic tools of the trade to such heart-stopping effect. Some doubts have been cast on the quality of the choral writing, but what is the use of writing 'good' music for a race riot? Sharper ears than mine have detected the rhythms of chants from Germany in the 'thirties in the music for the black fans; if this is true, the resonance is not comfortable. As the object of this adulation, the tenor Clyde Walker displayed rather more physical than vocal machismo on the first night; Josephine Barstow was almost embarrassingly good (though verbally muddy) as his daffy white admirer.
Colin Davis directed the musical side of the premiere with his wonted authority. But I have terrible doubts about the production. My admiration for Ralph Koltai knows few bounds. On a tight budget — whether for Midsummer Marriage in Cardiff or the Lorca show at the Round House — he works miracles. When the budget is less restricted — as for Maxwell Davies's Taverner or here — he can freak out. Tippett's dramaturgy is almost cinematic: public and private events merge one into another. Koltai has designed a two-level set with trucks for the intimate scenes and perspex panels. The upper storey has movable, if you please, floor and staircases: I should have thought the poor singers had quite enough to worry about without wondering whether there was anything for them to step on to other than thin air. Time and again the rumble of trucks and the clatter of moving panels destroyed the beginnings and ends of the interior scenes, while the frantic shouting of the stage management did little to enhance Tippett's visionary action. Within this unwieldy monster, Sam Wanamaker devised an equally busy production, some of it laughable. Movement a-plenty, stylised and naturalistic, enthusiastically executed, there was, but there is already a great deal going on in Tippett's words and notes, and anything that distracts from rather than clarifies the text seems to me little short of criminal.
The Ice Break was rapturously received. I hope this was more than a display of affection and gratitude towards a very Grand Old Man and that when the work is revived (as part of a Tippett cycle — now there's an idea) the public will extend its affection in the direction of the box office. This opera does look like a summing-up of past work, an affirmation of human values, an article of faith in something approaching progress. We need such demonstrations more than ever.
Previous page
