The Pre-history of The Midsummer Marriage

The Pre-history of The Midsummer Marriage examines the early collaborative phase (1943 to 1946) in the making of Michael Tippetts first mature opera and charts the developments that grew out of that phase. Drawing on a fascinating group of Tippetts sketchbooks and a lengthy sequence of his letters to Douglas Newton, it helps construct a narrative of the Tippett-Newton collaboration and provides insights into the devising of the operas plot, both in that early phase and in the phase from 1946 onwards when Tippett went on with the project alone. The book asks: who was Newton, and what kind of collaboration did he havethen cease to have with Tippett? What were the origins of and shaping factors behind the original scenario and libretto-drafts? How far did the narrative and controlling concepts of Midsummer Marriage in its final form tally withand how far did they move away fromthose that had been set up in the years of the two mens collaboration, the pre-historic years? The book will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers in opera studies and twentieth-century music.