New Year (Tippett)

[Master Jacques]

This is GREAT news. Martyn Brabbins, the BBC Scottish SO and full cast, to be recorded and released by NMC.

At last!!

https://www.zarzuela.net/temp/newyear.jpg

[Keith]

AND a new staging by Birmingham Opera and the CBSO in July!

[Pulcinella]

Good for NMC, but I hope that Hyperion haven't given up on their BBCSSO/Brabbins Tippett collaboration.

[Master Jacques]

AND a new staging by Birmingham Opera and the CBSO in July!

Excellent news also - after their triumph with The Ice Break I heard this was on the cards.

[Roslynmuse]

Wonderful news. I still have cassettes (!) of Andrew Davis's broadcast from the 90s but a recording of this is long, long overdue.

[Simon Biazeck]

Exciting news! I found this video early this year (!)...

https://ok.ru/videoembed/1621614136016

[smittims]

Many thanks, Simon. I look forward to seeing , and hearing, that. It'll be good to revisit this opera.

[Simon Biazeck]

Many thanks, Simon. I look forward to seeing , and hearing, that. It'll be good to revisit this opera.

You are most welcome!

[frankbridge]

This is marvellous news! I did have the honour of attending the performance of 'New Year' a few years ago in Birmingham, but I only have the suite with Richard Hickox on CD, and this is an important work which must be heard and recorded complete. Bravo NMC

[Simon Biazeck]

This is marvellous news! I did have the honour of attending the performance of 'New Year' a few years ago in Birmingham, but I only have the suite with Richard Hickox on CD, and this is an important work which must be heard and recorded complete. Bravo NMC

Really? Where? I know that they did a production of 'The Ice Break' - I watched it online. I didn't know that they'd already performed 'New Year'!

[edashtav]

Wonderful news. I still have cassettes (!) of Andrew Davis's broadcast from the 90s but a recording of this is long, long overdue.

Tippett's operas are important to the history of opera in Britain. Michael Tippett' biographer Oliver Soden has welcomed the emerging NMC recording with this thought provoking remark:

"Its revival and recording fill a gaping hole in the history of British opera, and provide the missing link between Benjamin Britten and Mark-Anthony Turnage. In its insistence on renewal and togetherness, it is an opera for now."

Do we agree that 'New Year' is a missing link?

[smittims]

I don't know enough of the operas after it to be able to say, but I see what he means. I think Tippett's operas are significant in their use of original plots and characters in place of re-telling existing stories (King Priam is of course the exception, though I beleive Francis Routh's analysis shows that it had a contemporary message) . I've heard few post-Tippett operas, though I was as impressed by Nigel Osborne's Electrification of the Soviet Union as I was disappointed by Nicholas Maw's Sophie's Choice.

[Master Jacques]

Tippett's operas are important to the history of opera in Britain. Michael Tippett' biographer Oliver Soden has welcomed the emerging NMC recording with this thought provoking remark:

"Its revival and recording fill a gaping hole in the history of British opera, and provide the missing link between Benjamin Britten and Mark-Anthony Turnage. In its insistence on renewal and togetherness, it is an opera for now."

Do we agree that 'New Year' is a missing link?

Not really, alas. It has a valedictory feeling, despite its sci-fi cosmic outreach, which places it at the end of a cycle rather than linking to anything else. Rather, New Year predicts the way in which society - and even music itself - were going to be dominated by urban and youth problems, questions of health and social services, and by AI and computerisation. But I think its example had little impact on Tippett's operatic heirs, musically or dramatically, in Britain at least.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Tippett's operas are important to the history of opera in Britain. Michael Tippett' biographer Oliver Soden has welcomed the emerging NMC recording with this thought provoking remark:

"Its revival and recording fill a gaping hole in the history of British opera, and provide the missing link between Benjamin Britten and Mark-Anthony Turnage. In its insistence on renewal and togetherness, it is an opera for now."

Do we agree that 'New Year' is a missing link?

Don’t know New Year well enough to be categoric but there is such a gulf of intellectual depth and musical ambition between Tippett and Turnage I just don’t see any link whatsoever. I don’t see much link with Britten either but for different reasons - they were interested in different things.

[bluestateprommer]

Various links of interest on New Year:
(a) Schott-EAM page:

https://www.eamdc.com/news/sir-michael-tippetts-opera-new-year-performed-by-the-bbc-scottish-symphony-orchestra-the-bbc-singers-and-martyn-brabbins/

(b) BBC SSO page (nice of the BBC to make it a free event):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ezb84f

(c) Birmingham Opera Company page:

https://www.birminghamopera.org.uk/new-year