The Midsummer Marriage

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Opera dates
Title: The midsummer wedding
Original title: The Midsummer Marriage
Shape: Opera in three acts
Original language: English
Music: Michael Tippett
Libretto : Michael Tippett
Premiere: January 27, 1955
Place of premiere: Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London
Playing time: approx. 2 ½ hours
Place and time of the action: Temple ruins in a forest clearing, present, day of the summer solstice
people
  • Mark, a young man of unknown origin ( tenor )
  • Jenifer, his fiancée, a young girl ( soprano )
  • King Fisher, Jenifer's father, businessman ( baritone )
  • Bella, King Fishers Secretary (soprano)
  • Jack, Bella's friend, mechanic (tenor)
  • Sosostris, a fortune teller ( alto )
  • the old man ("He-Ancient"), priest of the temple ( Bass )
  • the old ("She-Ancient"), priestess of the temple ( mezzo-soprano )
  • a tipsy man (bass)
  • a dancing man (tenor)
  • Strephon (dancer)
  • Marks and Jenifer's friends ( choir , also double choir)
  • Dancers in the wake of the ancients, as they are costumed in the ancient Greek style (ballet)

The Midsummer Marriage (German title: Die Mittsommerhochzeit ) is an opera in three acts by Michael Tippett . It premiered on January 27, 1955 at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London.

action

The opera takes place in the present on the day of the summer solstice.

Act one: tomorrow

A clearing near the top of a hill before daybreak

In the background in the middle is a kind of ancient Greek temple as part of a group of buildings that form a kind of sanctuary. To the right of this, steps lead up to a stone spiral staircase and left down to lattice gates in the flank of the hill.

Scene 1. Mark and Jenifer have invited friends for their wedding reception in the forest clearing. These arrive in the dark before the bride and groom. You feel unsafe until the sun gradually rises and the temple becomes visible behind the mist. When strange music from flutes and bells sounds in the distance, they hide behind the trees.

Scene 2. Led by the flute player Strephon and followed by the two old men, dancers come out of the temple and begin a sword or stick dance. Mark interrupts the ritual because he wants a new dance for his wedding day. He explains: Since his birth was mysterious, his wedding should also be strange. The ancients warn him of the danger that deviating from the unchangeable ritual could bring with it. When Mark insists, the dancers begin the same dance again, until the old man suddenly trips Strephon and makes him fall. The ancients explain to the shocked Mark that this should be a lesson for him. They promise him that he will learn a new dance today before he leaves this place. The ancients and the dancers withdraw to the temple.

Scene 3. The friends ask Mark who these people were. He replies that he does not know exactly. But he had observed her here regularly since he was a child. They never seem to change and apparently know the secret of his origins without telling him, however. Mark's thoughts wander back to his upcoming wedding and his love for Jenifer ("And like the lark I sing for joy because I love").

Scene 4. Jenifer appears in travel clothes instead of her wedding dress. She explains that she no longer wants to marry Mark because she does not want love, but truth. She now refuses his touch and evades when he tries to block her way. In doing so, she discovers the stone stairs. Dreamed of these magical levels since childhood. She exclaims that light is meant for her and shadow for him. Despite his warnings, she slowly climbs the steps and disappears. The girls laugh at the desperate Mark, but the men encourage them. When Jenifer's father, King Fisher, shouts from the right, Mark opens the gate and steps into the darkness of the cave.

Scene 5. King Fisher rushes into the clearing with his secretary Bella. He was able to watch Mark's disappearance and absolutely wants to prevent his daughter from marrying this "bastard". After looking around in amazement, he asks Bella to knock on the temple door and ask the ancients for information about this place (he basically only speaks through his secretary). The old people oppose her, saying that the gates only open to the “right people”. Bella tells her boss about this and is supposed to ask who these "real people" are. The ancients respond that there are no “real people” here. You return to the temple. King Fisher now wants to force open the bars. Bella goes to get her friend Jack, a mechanic.

Scene 6. King Fisher tells those present about Mark's bad character and promises the men money if they look for his daughter in the woods. These rush away. The girls, whom he tries to lure in the same way, refuse the money. He drives them away and is left alone.

Scene 7. Bella returns with her friend Jack, who despite her concerns is eager to break into the gate. The two dance and kiss until King Fisher urges them to hurry. The voice of the fortune teller Sosostris sounds behind the gates and gives a warning to King Fisher. The returning girls also beg him to stop. King Fisher ignores this and tells Jack to keep going. When the warning voice sounds again, the men come back too. They claim the voice is just a bluff and Jack should get on with his work. Bella and the girls argue with Jack and the men for a while while King Fisher tries in vain to use his authority.

Scene 8. Jenifer appears at the top of the steps - completely in white and partly transformed into Athena , the goddess of wisdom, born from the head of Zeus . Jack and Bella rush off. Jenifer declares her disgust for the earthly sphere, but thinks that her return will also force that of Mark. He emerges from the cave a little later - red and partly transformed into the shape of Dionysus , the god of wine and fertility, born from Zeus' thigh . While Jenifer sings about the starry sky, Mark speaks praised the fertile earth. A fanfare sounds, and the ancients step out of the temple with the dancers. They ask Mark and Jenifer to explain their quarrel. Surrounded by the dancers, Jenifer first describes her ascent into heaven. One dancer blows a silver trumpet and the other moves to the music. The girls, impressed, ask them to teach them this way. King Fisher interrupts, and now Mark, surrounded by the male dancers, describes his descent into the fascinating underworld, which culminated in an ecstatic union of humans and animals. Meanwhile, a dancer strikes a pair of bronze cymbals and the others move accordingly. The friends enthusiastically ask Mark to show them a "different birth to children of the earth". Jenifer slowly moves towards Mark and holds up a mirror in front of him, in which he should see the truth. However, this falls out of her hands and breaks when he shows her a golden branch. Now the two change roles. Jenifer enters the cave and Mark climbs the stairs. The old people and the dancers disappear back into the temple. King Fisher now thinks his daughter is completely insane. The friends, however, laugh optimistically.

Second act: afternoon

The set is turned slightly to the right

The stone steps are no longer visible. Only the doors and the left corner of the temple can still be seen. The gates are now in the middle on the left, and on the left the forest and the rolling hills.

Pre-scene. Strephon listens motionlessly on the steps for a while before dancing down them. After a moment's hesitation, he walks behind the temple. Choir singing approaches from afar.

Scene 1. Bella and Jack arrive as the choir wanders from left to right behind the scene. Some of the singers try in vain to summon the two of them to join the group before joining the others. The voices gradually fade away. When the couple is alone, Bella proposes marriage to Jack. Both dream of married life and children together. Slowly, as in a dream, they wander into the forest on the left.

Scene 2. Strephon and the other dancers perform three dances. In the first (“The Earth in Autumn”) Strephon depicts a hare that is chased by a dog (a dancer) through the trees (other dancers) and just barely escapes him several times. In the second dance (“The Waters in Winter”) an otter (dancer) chases a fish (strephon), which has to fight its way through whirlpools in the form of nymphs in order to save itself. He is injured in the process. In the third dance (“Die Luft im Frühling”) a bird (strephon) with a broken wing flees from a hawk (dancer), while the other dancers represent a compact group of young trees. This time the victim seems unable to escape. The stage darkens.

Scene 3. Bella, who was watching the dances with Jack, cries out in shock. She cannot tell whether the hunt was real or a dream. Jack gradually manages to calm her down. She takes out a mirror to fix her hair and makeup (“Oh, my face, my nose, my hair!”) And explains that King Fisher is waiting for her. Jack still has a role to play. Jack is worried. Bella runs into the woods and yells at him to catch her.

Post scene. The choir wanders back to the left, singing behind the scene.

Third act: evening and night

The scene is now rotated back to the starting position.

Scene 1. Most of the choir celebrates the end of the day after a meal together, singing and drinking. A half-drunk man begins to dance and gets in the way of another dancer. Everyone is curious why King Fisher ordered them here.

Scene 2. King Fisher and Bella arrive. He explains that he wants to fight the ancients with magical means. The fortune teller Sosostris is supposed to help him. The choir sets out to get them.

Scene 3. King Fisher tells Bella to call the elders over. When they step out of the temple, he challenges them to a magical competition. The price is supposed to be his daughter. The ancients accept.

Scene 4. The choir returns in procession. They carry with them a masked figure dressed in a green cloak and a pointed hat, who holds a crystal bowl in front of his face. Some of the choir members wave flags and banners that obscure the stage background. While the choir in Sosostris praises the union of the Sphinx and Sibylle , Bella runs up to the figure and exposes the deception, because it is Jack. Everyone mocks him as a "sorcerer's apprentice". A gong sounds and a larger than life figure veiled in black appears - the real Sosostris. Jack puts the crystal bowl next to her.

Scene 5. King Fisher implores Sosostris to use the crystal bowl to see his daughter's whereabouts. Sosostris laments her life as a medium in a slow, deep voice (“Who hopes to conjure with the world of dreams”). Then she asks Jack in a different voice to lift the bowl and recognizes in it a girl and a winged lion in a flowering meadow, who on closer inspection turns out to be human and unites with the girl. King Fisher, who first mistook the couple for Jenifer and Mark, gets angry. He describes her vision as a fraud and snatches the shell from Jack.

Scene 6. King Fisher tells Sosostris to speak the truth now. However, she is silent. Jack puts his robe back on with Bella's help. The two kiss goodbye. When King Fisher then orders Jack to unveil Sosostris, Bella exclaims that this is sacrilege. This is the moment when a man has to choose his fate. Jack refuses to obey King Fisher and throws his own mask at his feet. He leaves the scene with Bella.

Scene 7. King Fisher puts on the mask himself and takes one veil off Sosostris. Under the last veil it begins to glow. When King Fisher reaches for this veil, he falls to the ground by himself. Underneath is a bud that opens into a huge lotus flower , whose red and gold glow illuminates the now dark stage. A final layer of tissue falls off the inside of the bud, and within it Mark and Jenifer appear, absorbed in mutual contemplation like the Indian deities Shiva and Parvati . The opened petals form a circle on the floor. Sosostris has disappeared. King Fisher draws his pistol to kill Mark and free his daughter. At this moment Mark and Jenifer turn to him "in a powerful gesture". King Fisher grabs his heart and falls dead to the ground.

Scene 8. The old man asks the men present to carry King Fisher to his grave in the temple. Meanwhile, the girls are supposed to prepare a shroud from the veils lying around. Strephon and the dancers come out of the temple and begin a fourth dance (“Fire in Summer”). After lighting a ritual fire, Strephon dances with a burning stick. The other dancers urge him to Mark and Jenifer until he collapses in front of them, exhausted. In the second part of the fire dance the lotus blossoms close around Mark, Jenifer and Strephon until only the burning stick of the latter is visible. Mark, Jenifer and the choir extol the divinity of carnal love. After a moment of silence, the stick is drawn into the veil. These glow internally and eventually burst into flames. It is the fire of the summer solstice , St. John's Day .

Scene 9. After the flames have gone out, the stage is only lit by moonlight. Strephon, Mark, Jenifer, the old people and the dancers have disappeared. The choir wonders if it was all just a dream. After a while, the moonlight also disappears, birds begin to sing, and the new day begins. The light is now like at the beginning of the first act and the sanctuary is shrouded in fog again. Mark and Jenifer appear from opposite sides. Both wear wedding attire. The celebration can begin. As the sun rises, the two of them leave the clearing with their friends. The temple and the sanctuary can now be seen as ruins against the clear sky.

layout

orchestra

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

libretto

Dramaturgically, the work is reminiscent of Mozart's Magic Flute . Here, too, there is a higher and a lower pair. The Midsummer Marriage does not have a conventional progressive plot, but is intended as a “dramatic allegory” for an “ individuation process ”. In the libretto he wrote himself, Tippett used a large number of different sources from literature, mythology and esotericism. The opera title refers to William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream , which is also set in a magical forest at the time of the summer solstice and is about couples willing to wed. In both works the real and the supernatural world meet. The obstacles that people encounter are based on errors and delusions that need to be resolved. This process of knowledge is overseen by the ancient priests. Instead of an examination ritual as in the Magic Flute , an initiation rite is necessary. a. finds its expression in the three dances of the second act. The gender struggle symbolically represented in it is to be understood as a competition between Eros and Logos or Animus and Anima . The opposites finally unite in a fourth dance, a fertility ritual . The four dances are also assigned to the vegetation periods of the four seasons. As Carl Gustav Jung proclaimed, every initiation requires a sacrifice. This role is played by the materialistic tycoon King Fisher. The lower couple Jack / Bella also experienced a maturation process in which they both turn away from King Fisher and take responsibility themselves.

The setting has a model in George Bernard Shaw's parable Back to Methuselah, in which Strephon and the "Ancients" appear forerunners of the corresponding characters in Tippett's opera. The names of Mark, Jenifer and King Fisher (the barren "Fisher King") as well as the hunting scenes in the second act go back to Celtic mythology . The direct source of the latter comes from the British poet Robert Graves , in which the boy Gwion is pursued by the sorceress Cerridwen in various animal forms. The figure of the clairvoyant Madame Sosostris is taken from TS Eliot's poem Das wüsten Land ; her text, on the other hand, is based on Paul Valéry's poem Pythia. The names of Bella ("the beautiful") and Jack ("Hans Dampf", "Jack" and colloquially for "John", cf. St. John's Fire ) speak for themselves. Jack's golden branch and other main features of the plot come from ancient Roman mythology or the multi-volume study Der goldene Zweig by the Scottish anthropologist James George Frazer . The motto given in the score “You should say: I am a child of the earth and the starry sky” is an ancient funeral motto that was used in the 4th century BC. Was used in Crete and southern Italy. The closing words ("All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay") are taken literally from William Butler Yeats ' poem Lapis Lazuli.

The couples Mark / Jenifer and Jack / Bella never perform together. This suggests that Mark and Jack or Jenifer and Bella each represent different aspects of the same person. Strephon as Alter Ego Marks and the hunted dancers as Bella's Jungian shadow depict further personality aspects .

music

The music of the opera is well composed, but with arias, duets, ensembles and choirs it also draws on the means of the number opera of the 19th century. The second act is designed as a bow. After a choir and a duet, the central dances follow, before the act ends again with a duet and a choir. The third act begins with a large choral scene. Tippett proves humor in the love duet of Bella and Jack (II.1) and in Bella's make-up aria "Oh, my face, my nose, my hair!" (II.3). Further musical highlights are the first appearance of Mark and the following coloratura aria by Jenifer as well as the four-part intensifying aria of the Sosostris “Who hopes to conjure with the world of dreams” (III.5).

The melody is characterized by the frequent use of fourths and fifths. The score is color-coded and contains varied harmonies on a tonal basis. The vocal parts are characterized by melisms and contrapuntal polyphony . With the latter, Tippett takes up the vocal polyphony of the English Renaissance. What is striking is the frequently used polyrhythmics with many syncopations , which are reminiscent of the music of Igor Stravinsky , for example . The name “madrigalesk”, which he himself chose for the “jumping rhythms”, with which he constantly rekindles the constant movement of the music, also points to the old music.

During the fire ritual in the third act, a canon indicates the harmonious end of the opera. The dances of the second act are also well constructed. Here you can find ritornelles , stanzas and variations. An example of the latter is the autumn dance over an ostinate bass line (“ground”).

Work history

After Michael Tippett had considered and discarded various themes for his first full-length opera over a long period of time, he decided to write the libretto himself , as in his oratorio A Child of Our Time from 1944. Like this, the opera The Midsummer Marriage is an examination of the theses of Carl Gustav Jung , the unconscious and the striving for wholeness. Accordingly, the first working title of his opera (Aurora Consurgens or The Laughing Children) referred to the alchemical treatise Aurora consurgens from the 15th century, discovered by Jung . He described his vision of the scenario as follows:

“I saw a stage picture… of a wooded hilltop with a temple, where a warm and soft young man was being rebuffed by a cold and hard young woman… to such a degree that the collective, magical archetypes take charge - Jung's anima and animus - the girl, inflated by the latter, rises through the stage flies to heaven, and the man, overwhelmed by the former, descends through the stage floor to hell. But it was clear they would soon return. "

"I saw a strange picture ... of a wooded hilltop with a temple where a warm and soft young man was turned away by a cold and tough young woman ... to such an extent that the assembled magical archetypes take the lead - Jung's anima and animus - the girl, filled with the latter, rises through the stage to heaven, and the man, overwhelmed by the former, descends through the stage floor into hell. But it was obvious that they would return soon. "

- Michael Tippet

The final three-act opera was created between 1946 and 1952 from the original two-act draft. Tippett created libretto and music step by step in parallel. He described the entire development process as well as the influences of the various sources and Jung's work in his collection of essays The Birth of an Opera.

Before the entire opera was performed, Tippett created a concert suite with the four ritual dances, which was played for the first time in February 1953 by the Basel Chamber Orchestra under Paul Sacher .

It premiered on January 27, 1955 at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London under the musical direction of John Pritchard and the direction of Christopher West. The actors were Richard Lewis (Mark), Joan Sutherland (Jenifer), Otakar Kraus (King Fisher), Adele Leigh (Bella), John Lanigan (Jack), Oralia Domínguez (Sosostris), Michael Langdon (the old man), Edith Coates ( the old woman), Gordon Farrall (tipsy man), Andrew Daniels (dancing man), Monika Sinclair (one voice) and Pirmin Trecu (Strephon). The choreography came from John Cranko .

The production initially provoked mixed reactions from critics and audiences. While the music was widely praised, the lyrics were found to be too mystical, complicated and confusing. The Daily Express even called the libretto "one of the worst in the 350-year history of opera".

A BBC studio recording conducted by Norman Del Mar brought the work back to consciousness in 1963, and there was a new production in Covent Garden in 1968 under Colin Davis and directed by Ande Anderson with Alberto Remedios as Mark and Joan Carlyle as Jenifer. Here an abridged version authorized by the composer was played. An audio recording was released on CD and proved to be very successful.

Other productions were:

Recordings

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Original English text: "You shall say I am a child of earth and of starry heaven".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Robert Maschka: The Midsummer Marriage. In: Rudolf Kloiber , Wulf Konold , Robert Maschka: Handbuch der Oper. 9th, expanded, revised edition 2002. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag / Bärenreiter, ISBN 3-423-32526-7 (d) , pp. 759–756.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Thomas Weitzel: The Midsummer Marriage. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 6: Works. Spontini - Zumsteeg. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-492-02421-1 , pp. 300-302.
  3. ^ A b c Geraint Lewis:  Midsummer Marriage, The. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  4. ↑ a b Ulrich Schreiber : Opera guide for advanced learners. 20th Century II. German and Italian Opera after 1945, France, Great Britain. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1437-2 , pp. 568-571.
  5. ↑ January 27, 1955: "The Midsummer Marriage". In: L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia ..
  6. ↑ a b c d work information from Schott Music , accessed on August 10, 2019.
  7. ^ The Midsummer Marriage. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , pp. 919-920.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Michael Tippett. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005.
  9. ^ The Midsummer Marriage (1984) in the Internet Movie Database , accessed on August 2, 2019.
  10. ^ Rob Barnett: Review of the CD from 1989 at MusicWeb-International, accessed on August 2, 2019.