Like few other theatre works—The Magic Flute, A Midsummer Night’s Dream—Tippett’s first opera creates a wholly other place, one where human actions can be seen as in a tilted mirror. Since this is indeed an opera, the place, or dreamspace, is conjured by music: by luminescent music that, in its flowing abundance, radiant harmonies and evocative wind colourings, represents the natural world within which the characters have to integrate themselves. The central couple, those whose marriage is at fi...