About the work
Opera in three acts by Michael Tippett to his own libretto, written in contemporary colloquial English, first performed on 7 July 1977 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Colin Davis, to whom the work is dedicated.
Plot
The Russian dissident Lev returns after twenty years in a labour camp to a Western city, where his wife Nadia and now grown-up son Yuri await him at the airport. Conflict between the generations and rival youth gangs escalates into violent rioting with deaths and injuries; only afterwards do father and son cautiously begin to reconnect.
Cultural significance
Tippett prefaced the score with a line from François Villon's 'Ballade des pendus' and confronted contemporary material head-on, from street violence to drug culture and racial conflict; the colloquial libretto was widely criticised as clumsy at the premiere, while the crowd scenes with sirens and spoken chant were seen as musically daring.