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Spirituality in Post‐War British Opera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Michael Fuller
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Opera is currently enjoying a great deal of public interest. In its popular understanding, as the most lavish, the most spectacular, the most luxuriant of art forms, it might not seem an obvious form for religious exploration, or the working out of spiritual problems. That, one might think, is rather the preserve of more private and introspective art forms: to be left to writers, poets, and workers in the plastic arts. Yet, in the operatic works produced by British composers in the last fifty or so years, many do take this apparently private subject-matter into this most public of artistic domains. This article is an attempt to draw together some of the more notable examples of this tendency, to compare them in their diversity, and to draw attention to this phenomenon among the non-opera-going public. (In all that follows, dates after opera titles refer to the year of their first production.)

Bishop Richard Harries has recently remarked, ‘All works of art, whatever their content, have a spiritual dimension’, in that they can be a source of comfort and solace. He goes on to distinguish ‘a distinctive tradition of ostensibly spiritual art’, which ‘seeks to indicate through symbols the eternal reality behind, beyond and within this world’. In this article, the term ‘spirituality’ is used quite loosely, usually to refer to the use by composers and their librettists of material from sources acknowledged to be of spiritual significance. I have also drawn attention to composers’ uses of myths and legends, since these may be said to have a spiritual content in Harries’ sense, insofar as they consciously direct their hearers to levels of understanding beyond the simple level of the story being told.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 75 , Issue 887 , November 1994 , pp. 524 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Harries, R., Art and the Beauty of God (London, 1993), p 101Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p 111.

3 Quoted in Kennedy, M., The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (Oxford, 1980), p 313Google Scholar.

4 Holloway, R., ‘The Church Parables: Limits and Renewals’ in Palmer, C. (ed), The Britten Companion (London, 1984), p 221Google Scholar.

5 cf. Kennedy, M., Britten (London, 1981), pp 48–9Google Scholar.

6 R. Duncan, ‘Finishing the Text’, quoted in English National Opera programme for 1993 revival of “The Rape of Lucretia’.

7 Carpenter, H., Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London, 1992), pp 288 ffGoogle Scholar.

8 Ibid., p 296.

9 Cooke, M., ‘Britten's Billy Budd: Melville as Opera Libretto’ in Cooke, M. and Reed, P. (eds), Billy Budd (Cambridge:, 1993), p 31Google Scholar.

10 Brett, P., ‘Salvation at Sea: Billy Budd’ in Palmer, C. (ed), The Britten Companion (London, 1984), p 136Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p 142.

12 Tippett, M., Essay ‘What I Believe’, in Music of the Angels: Essays and Sketchbooks of Michael Tippett (London, 1980), p 51Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., p 53.

14 Ibid., pp 50ff.

15 Tippett, M., Those Twentieth Century Blues: An Autobiography (London, 1991), pp 62 fGoogle Scholar.

16 Quoted in Kemp, I., Tippett: The Composer and his Music (Oxford, 1984), p 326Google Scholar.

17 cf White, E. Walter, Tippett and his Operas (London, 1979), p 116Google Scholar.

18 Opera, 1986, p 1199.

19 cf. Opera, 1986, p 495: Opera, 1986, p 1199: Opera, 1991, p 876.

20 Hall, M., Harrison Birtwistle (London, 1984), p 125.Google Scholar

21 Griffiths, P., Peter Maxwell Davies (London, 1982), p 48Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., p 163.

23 Opera, 1985, p 380.

24 For further comments on Harvey's ‘Inquest of Love’, and on Tavener's ‘Mary of Egypt’ and Saxton's ‘Caritas’, see M. Fuller, ‘Some Expressions of Spirituality in Contemporary Opera’, Modern Believing, 1994, pp 6 ff.

25 J. Tavener, programme note in 1992 Aldeburgh Festival Programme Book, p 96.

26 J. Tavener, ‘The Sacred in Art’, in 1992 Aldeburgh Festival Programme Book, p 89.