Tippett: Stage Works

View all works by Tippett in the main app

Explore the complete catalog of Stage compositions by Tippett. This curated list includes composition years, historical Wikipedia context, and interactive audio to add specific tracks directly to your listening queue.

Title Year Actions
King Priam

King Priam is an opera by Michael Tippett, to his own libretto. The story is based on Homer's Iliad, except the birth and childhood of Paris, which are taken from the Fabulae of Hyginus. The premiere was on 29 May 1962, at Coventry. The opera was composed for an arts festival held in conjunction with the reconsecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, for which Benjamin Britten also wrote his War Requiem, which was first performed in the Cathedral the day after the premiere of King Priam. The first Covent Garden performance was on 5 June, conducted by John Pritchard. It was premiered in Germany at the Badisches Staatstheater in 1963 (in a translation by Walter Bergmann), in Greece at the 1985 Athens Festival, in France at the Opéra de Nancy et de Lorraine in 1988, in Italy at Batignano in 1990, and in the United States San Francisco Opera Center Showcase in 1994. In 2014 the work was revived by English Touring Opera, with a reduced orchestration by Iain Farrington, the first performance of this version being given at the Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House on 13 February 2014. As epigraph to the score Tippett placed the German words "Es möge uns das Schicksal gönnen, dass wir das innere Ohr von dem Munde der Seele nicht abwenden," or, "May Fate grant that we never turn our inner ear away from our soul's lips." These words conclude a 1912 essay on the paintings of Arnold Schoenberg by Wassily Kandinsky.

The Knot Garden

The Knot Garden is the third opera by composer Michael Tippett for which he wrote the original English libretto. The work had its first performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 2 December 1970 conducted by Sir Colin Davis and produced by Sir Peter Hall. There is a recording with the original cast.

The Midsummer Marriage

The Midsummer Marriage is an opera in three acts, with music and libretto by Michael Tippett. The work's first performance was at Covent Garden, on 27 January 1955, conducted by John Pritchard. The reception of the opera was controversial, over confusion as to the libretto and Tippett's use of symbols and psychological references. The opera has received at least 10 more productions, in England, Wales, Scotland, Germany, Sweden and the United States, including two more at the Royal Opera House. The premiere performance was recorded, and has been issued on compact disc. Covent Garden revived the work in 1968, conducted by Colin Davis, with the Ritual Dances choreographed by Gillian Lynne and in 1970, when the production formed the basis of the first commercial recording. Tippett extracted the Four Ritual Dances from the opera as a separate concert work.