It’s 17 years since Michael Tippett’s first and finest opera was last seen on a British stage, and more than half a century since the only previous commercial recording of The Midsummer Marriage. Conducted by Colin Davis, that was based on the 1967 Covent Garden production, while this new version, which overall seems to me at least the equal of its predecessor, is taken from the concert performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London a year ago with which Edward Gardner inaugurated his tenure as the London Philharmonic’s principal conductor.
