Ice Break, The, is an opera in three acts by the English composer Sir Michael Tippett to his own libretto (text). It received its first performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, on July 7, 1977.
Set in the United States during the 1970’s, the opera draws its subject matter from the stifling, imprisoning characteristics of stereotypes and the need for individuals to break out of them in a process of rebirth. Lev, a former teacher, is on his way to the United States after serving 20 years in prison camps in Russia, his home country. Waiting to meet him at the crowded airport are his wife Nadia and their son Yuri, who was still a baby when she emigrated with him to the New World. Also waiting are Yuri’s girlfriend Gayle and Gayle’s friend Hannah, an African American nurse. Hannah has come to meet her black boyfriend Olympion. Out of a series of individual and collective tensions—racial and political conflicts as well as tensions between family members of different generations—a vicious riot develops.
The violence erupts just as Lev and Olympion arrive. Olympion and Gayle are killed, and Yuri is badly injured. The scene shifts to the hospital where Yuri has been taken. Nadia, overcome by events, dies peacefully remembering her childhood skiing in a mountain forest in early spring and hearing the ice breaking on the river (a metaphor for rebirth). Lev is comforted by Hannah. During an interlude, the messenger Astron (sung by two voices) is mistaken for God but mockingly denies divine status. Luke operates on Yuri. Finally, Yuri is released from the plaster encasing his body, which cracks like breaking ice, and is reconciled with his father, Lev.
See also Tippett, Sir Michael .
