The Operavision page claims that this 2015 production from Birmingham Opera is the first time this has been performed since its debut; according to wikipedia, that's not strictly true, but it's certainly a rarity. Tippett also wrote King Priam, which people seem to think is his best opera. He's known for writing his own libretti, which are reputed to be...bad. King Priam's meant to be the one time he was able to rise above that, to some extent. That's all I know.
So...there's a pacifist (Russian, presumably, though it's not specified) who's going to be released from a prison camp after twenty years. His wife Nadia and son Yuri are there to meet him at the airport, although Yuri resents his dad and sees his pacifism as weakness. Also arriving is Olympion, the new world champion (champion of what? The WORLD, dammit! Don't ask dumb questions!). He's very invested in/proud of his blackness. Yuri gets angry because his girlfriend Gayle is flirting with Olympion, and things degenerate into a race riot. Gayle and Olympion are killed, and Yuri is critically injured. Nadia is also dying, for reasons never specified. I mean, you can infer that it has to do with the riot, but there's no actual indication of that. Anyway, she sings and dies. Two people appear to the crowd who are (maybe) some sort of collective divine messenger, or maybe just a mass hallucination; who knows. They tell the people to take care of the world; God will take care of himself (actually, they say "take care FOR"--is that really part of any native English-speaker's dialect?). Yuri's life is saved thanks to a doctor and Olympion's nurse girlfriend Hannah. He's reconciled with his dad, apparently.
So this plot is a godawful mess. Obviously, it's not supposed to be strictly realistic, but even in the context of what it's trying to do, it's really clumsy stuff. The title is suppose to refer to, you know, getting beyond racial tensions and prejudice and stuff, but...I don't know that it succeeds in that regard. None of the characters are more than one-dimensional, and none of their relationships are given any detail. You would think Yuri would be the main character, wouldn't you? But he's just...nothing. He's racist at the beginning. And he's not racist at the end? Maybe? Who knows? Olympion is clearly meant to be a Muhammed Ali type, but he mainly makes me wonder if Tippett had ever met a black person. This article argues that all the opera's apparent weaknesses are intentional and are actually strengths when you think about it, but color me extremely unconvinced.
Not helping things is the fact that this opera seems to have colorblind casting, which I am ordinarily in favor of, but here it really muddies the waters: Lev is white, but Nadia is black, and Yuri appears to be Indian; meanwhile, the singer playing Olympion, Ta'u Pupu'a, is of Tongan descent (which to my eyes at least doesn't look black, though I'm well aware that these are basically just political categories). And before you say anything, let's establish that I'm fully aware that this could be intentional to underscore the essential meaninglessness of "race" as a concept. But...if that was the point, I don't think it comes across, and besides, what then are we to make of the fact that the doctor who saves Yuri is black: is that significant? You would think so, but with this muddying of the waters, it's hard to tell.
AND YET: ungainly and not wholly successful as this all may be, I have to admit, there's definitely something here. This opera has a fuck-ton of energy and Tippett's music--which I was a little on the fence about in King Priam--is pretty darned great here, filled with frenzied, Straussian rhythms. And the production is first-rate: it's one of these sort of interactive things, with audience members congregated in the back like they're part of the crowd, which seems to very much suit the material, making it feel immediate as hell. The riot is presented as this violent, fragmented pastiche, filled with memorable imagery. Whether, strictly speaking, the opera achieves its goals, it remains highly compelling, and you can't help but be impressed by such an ambitious effort. I wasn't paying attention, so I'm not sure whether Operavision added this to the line-up before or after George Floyd's murder, but in spite of being over forty years old, it really does speak to our zeitgeist--if not in specific detail, then certainly in spirit. It may well be the Opera for Our Times.
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