Homer ‘Viewed from the Corridor’

This chapter explores how Tippett’s opera, King Priam, retells Homer’s Iliad by fracturing the epic narrative into distinct episodes and patterns which expose to the audience’s scrutiny the internal conflicts of the main characters. This process involves balancing emotional realism with the alienation effect characteristic of Brechtian ‘epic’ theatre. Figures appear in patterns of twos, threes, and larger collectives, all mirroring and reflecting back upon one another. These reflections are highlighted by the requirement that the opera’s singers take on multiple roles, often crossing the divide between the mortal and divine realms or between the action and the choral response to it. Through these fluid groupings, which are masterminded by the strange figure of the god Hermes, Tippett’s protagonists demonstrate different degrees of self-knowledge and of autonomy within the constraints of the drama; this in turn offers new perspectives on the choices and behaviours of the original Homeric characters.