Sally Groves on Michael Tippett's 'New Year'
13th March 2025
ArticlesNMC Principal Benefactor and former Creative Director at Schott Music, Sally Groves provides a personal insight into Michael Tippett's New Year.
New Year is a love story – for me, anyway. When you read Oliver Soden’s marvellously wide-ranging article for the CD you will find lots of other things it’s about and where all Michael Tippett’s ideas came from. (Oh, and please of course, if you haven’t already, read his wonderful biography of Tippett). But for me, Jo Ann is the centre of this opera. Michael loved women and formed deep relationships with two, especially – so deep that he contemplated marriage. At the beginning of the opera, Jo Ann is trapped in her flat: she falls in love and at the very end finds a way back to her own strength. She is the bridge between the two worlds of New Year (“Somewhere and Today” and “Nowwhere and Tomorrow”) because her love is for a space traveller (from a galaxy far, far away). But, as Oliver says, ‘why should the realms of fantasy and science fiction be outside the boundaries of opera, which in its earliest incarnations dealt with the fantastic creatures of myth and the descent of Orpheus from one world into another?’
Knowing Michael was one of the great joys of my life, and working for him as his publisher was the greatest of responsibilities. I would go and stay for weekends at his house in Wiltshire (where he was looked after by two lovely housekeepers straight out of Cider with Rosie). He always worked for some hours in the morning, would break for a light lunch and then head out into the Wiltshire countryside. Sharing those walks, you had to summon all your curiosity, imagination and receptiveness. The libretto for New Year, as with all his operas, reflects the fecundity of his mind and its allusive nature, and exchanges (if you could keep up – Michael walked and talked quite fast) ranged from economics to Eastenders (television was his relaxation).
Back to Oliver again: ‘New Year is an attempt, musically and dramatically, to ask whether lyrical beauty can be clawed back in the face of metropolitan chaos. The music encompasses this journey, from city-sprawl to the rose-canopied dreamscape of another world’. So musically it will remind you at times of his first opera, The Midsummer Marriage (dance is a crucial element in both), at other times of The Ice Break. The music has huge energy and the orchestral writing is breathtaking. Michael pours his love of Jo Ann into her music and gives her a beautiful sarabande. For her foster-brother Donny he writes reggae and ska. Pelegrin the space traveller sings radiant Monteverdi.
Approach this opera with curiosity, imagination and receptiveness! We are so lucky that NMC have included it in their series of amazing British operas.
Sally Groves, December 2024
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