Saturday, November 10, 2012 | 7:30pmJordan Hall at New England Conservatory
Michael Tippett
Michael Tippett The Midsummer Marriage (1955)
Sara Heaton, soprano
Julius Ahn, tenor
David Kravitz, baritone
Deborah Selig, soprano
Matthew DiBattista, tenor
Joyce Castle, mezzo-soprano
Lynn Torgove, mezzo-soprano
Robert Honeysucker, baritone
Gil Rose, conductor
PLEASE NOTE: This concert has a total run time of 150 minutes.
The Boston Modern Orchestra Project presents the concert performance of Michael Tippett’s opera The Midsummer Marriage. Modeled after Mozart's The Magic Flute, The Midsummer Marriage follows two couples on the verge of marriage while touching upon both the mythical and earthly worlds.
Program notes (opens in a new window)
News and Press
[Concert Review]
Michael Tippett's Midsummer madness
The Boston Phoenix
Full review
The first American production of any of Michael Tippett's five operas was Sarah Caldwell's The Ice Break for the Opera Company of Boston in 1979. In 1991, BU students did The Knot Garden. This year, Opera Boston scheduled the first Boston production of The Midsummer Marriage, Tippett's first opera (completed in 1952, after six years of work). But Opera Boston folded.
[Concert Review]
Midsummer Marriage: Strange & Wonderful
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Full review
Saturday night Jordan Hall was, perhaps, half full for three hours of memorable music as Gil Rose conducted Boston Modern Orchestra Project in a concert performance of Michael Tippett’s 1955 opera, The Midsummer Marriage.
[Concert Review]
A Phoenix Rises from the Ashes of Opera Boston
WQXR
Full review
Boston opera buffs were dealt a hard blow last December when Opera Boston, a company known for innovative productions of less familiar repertory, announced it was shutting down amid a financial and managerial crisis. But the company’s ambitious plans were not entirely sent to the scrap heap of operatic history: Sir Michael Tippett’s opera, The Midsummer Marriage – planned as the centerpiece of the company’s 2012 season – was reconceived as a concert production Saturday at Jordan Hall by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP).
[Concert Review]
BMOP proceeds with Tippett's 'Midsummer Marriage'
The Boston Globe
Full review
Before a note was played, Saturday night’s Boston Modern Orchestra Project performance of Michael Tippett’s first mature opera, “The Midsummer Marriage,” generated more good will and broader public curiosity than the average season-opener. That’s because the now-defunct Opera Boston had this rarely spotted Tippett opera on its agenda long before the company abruptly folded last December.
[Concert Review]
BMOP gives worthy advocacy to Tippett's unwieldy "Midsummer Marriage'
Boston Classical Review
Full review
One door closes, another opens. With the demise of the ambitious company Opera Boston last year, director Gil Rose lost a chance to explore some of the gems in the outermost reaches of the stage repertory.
Fear not. Rose simply brought one such rarity, Michael Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage—slated last season for Opera Boston but left unperformed—to his other adventurous ensemble, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. BMOP performed a semi-staged version of the mid-20th century opera Saturday evening at Jordan Hall.