Michael Tippett question

[Stanfordian]

I seem to remember that Michael Tippett used break-dancing in one of his operas? If so which one was it? The Ice Break maybe?

[mercia]

New Year ??

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

New Year ??

I think this is it: the only one of Tippett's operas to have been written during the height of the Break-Dancing fashion (1989): The Ice Break was 1977.

[Thomas Roth]

It is New Year. There is some rap as well.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I'm a great admirer of Tippett, but New Year is not a work that I took to. I remember its first broadcast on TV and had to turn it off after about an hour or so. The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam though are masterpieces. I need to try The Knot Garden again but have never heard The Ice Break.

[ahinton]

I'm a great admirer of Tippett, but New Year is not a work that I took to. I remember its first broadcast on TV and had to turn it off after about an hour or so. The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam though are masterpieces. I need to try The Knot Garden again but have never heard The Ice Break.

You've not missed much if you've not heard the Ice Crack; it seems to me that Tippett's operas start out at the top of the composer's game and descend stepwise thereafter. New Year seems to be to be a particularly egregious example of the kind of faux-trendiness that afflicts large swathes of a particulr symphonic work that he wrote between his magnificent second symphony and his very different but still fascinating fourth and to which he sadly gave a number...

[Serial_Apologist]

I remember its first broadcast on TV and had to turn it off after about an hour or so. The Midsummer Marriage and King Priam though are masterpieces.

I just managed to see it through.

[Chris Newman]

I love the music of Michael Tippett, but The Ice Break and New Year were rather odd; too much of an old man trying to be young/mutton dressed up as lamb. Fortunately just afterwards he wrote some very lovely pieces before he died to remind us that at heart he was one of England's most lyrical voices.

[Roehre]

New Year seems to be to be a particularly egregious example of the kind of faux-trendiness that afflicts large swathes of a particulr symphonic work that he wrote between his magnificent second symphony and his very different but still fascinating fourth and to which he sadly gave a number...

Thank goodness, I am not the only one who is puzzled (and negatively on top of that) after listening to that work

[Ferretfancy]

I remember smiling way back when a rather po faced announcer introduced Robert Tear singing Songs for Dov, in which, he said " The composer uses boogie woogie rhythms! "