Tippett’s decision to extract the four Ritual Dances from his opera 'The Midsummer Marriage' as a self-contained concert suite reflects the fact that the medium of dance was always present in his conception of the opera. From the start, there was to be an interaction within the opera between the real world and the world of mythology, partly Greek, partly Celtic. This mythological element culminates, in the finished opera, in the 'Ritual Dances' of Acts 2 and 3. Tippett himself described hi...