Word: tippetts
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President W. Paul Tippett Jr. of American Motors Corp. used to joke that his company actually had a three-word name: "Ailing American Motors." Now Tippett and his colleagues are laughing for a different reason. AMC has pulled back from the brink yet again, chiefly by cutting its work force, consolidating its plants and concentrating on a few small cars and specialized vehicles...
...Tippett's score-dense, compact, intricate-rumbles darkly with violence and glistens with unexpected color. The choral scenes capture the shout of the mob. The solo lines sometimes soar in daring melismas, sometimes settle into softly swooping lyricism...
Unfortunately, as in his previous operas, Tippett's libretto falls short of his music. The harder he tries to be colloquial or hip, the more stilted he becomes ("What's bugging you, man?/ Cool and jivey once;/ Now, touchy and tight"). His three acts of roughly 30 minutes each are so compressed that they allow no development, leaving on the mind's eye only a flashing succession of emblems...
...strength of Tippett's conception comes through despite such flaws, es pecially in the visionary final scenes. After the racial violence, an astral spirit speaks to a chorus of tripped-out hippies in the words of Jung and Shakespeare; but when they hail the spirit as a savior, he sneers, "You must be joking." No comforting re ceived wisdom for Tippett. Lev's dying wife Nadia recalls from her Russian childhood the sound of ice breaking on the rivers in springtime. As Lev and Yuri achieve a provisional reconciliation, the orchestra sounds the ice-break motif, suggesting...
Astonishingly, Boston's was the first professional production of a Tippett op era in this country. (Northwestern Uni versity staged The Knot Garden in 1974.) Although U.S. orchestras are increasingly taking up his instrumental works, his acceptance here lags behind even his late blooming in England. Tippett says he al ways knew it would take him a lifetime to come to artistic fruition. And, he adds, -T was always arrogant enough to know I'd get there in the end." The Ice Break emphatically confirms that...