Operatic life would be much duller without the music of Michael Tippett and the work of Birmingham Opera Company. In this show the two bring out the best in each other. Leaving reality, you enter a circus tent in Birmingham city centre and enter the world of an octogenarian composer whose last opera, first performed in 1989, tells the story of three time-travelling extraterrestrials who land on Earth on New Year’s Eve, compelled by the plight of unhappy Jo Ann. Tippett died in 1998, and New Year didn’t get a second staging, although the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performed a concert version this year, and my colleague Simon Thompson hated it.
This production is the second big show by BOC since the untimely death of its guiding light Graham Vick. Thankfully Keith Warner, who directs, has imbued the spirit of Vick’s uproarious, participatory style. An army of Brummies are the backbone of a promenade production — skilfully designed by Nicky Shaw and sensitively choreographed by Simone Sandroni — that expands the breadth of Tippett’s drama and does a fair bit to smudge its ponderousness.
The two worlds of Terror Town — the grungey reality and the aliens’ shiny spacecraft — are winningly evoked. There’s more than a dash of Black Mirror in the combination of dystopia and glitz (two Presenters, sung by Grace Durham and Oskar McCarthy, are like reality TV hosts). In an opera concerned with “what is real and what is fake” the allusions to fake news and conspiracy theories today are palpable but not preachy. The clotted text is given power by a strong cast — notably Francesca Chiejina’s Jo Ann, Joshua Stewart’s Pelegrin (the alien who falls for her) and Samantha Crawford’s searingly sung Regan, a spandex-clad cyborg unable to grasp human love.
And the music? Its expressive effects are undoubtedly real, not fake — except when, mostly in scenes with the problematic character of Donny, Jo Ann’s tearaway foster brother, Tippett embarrassingly dips his toe into rap or “rhythm and blues”, seemingly unaware that the dominant pop music of the time was Kylie and Bananarama. The conductor Alpesh Chauhan can’t do much with those passages (nor could the baritone Sakiwe Mkosana) but even in this tricky space Chauhan drew marvellous effects from many other stirring sections, vibrantly played by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
There’s some ravishing brass music and stirring choral writing, and the ensemble that finishes the first half is brilliantly scored. In a story of transformation the score’s very elusiveness is part of the madcap magic. Most of us may be in the gutter, but Tippett was always looking at the stars.
★★★★☆
135min
To July 13, birminghamopera.org.uk
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