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Miracle in the Gorbals was the second of three commissioned ballet scores by Arthur Bliss for the Vic-Wells (Sadler's Wells) Ballet, later to become the Royal Ballet, and the first of two by him (with Adam Zero) for the choreographer Robert Helpmann. Premiered in London in 1944, conducted by Constant Lambert, with handsome de cor by Edward Burra, it was revived in 1946 for performance at the Royal Opera House, reappearing in the repertoire until 1958.
At the time of the ballet's creation, the Gorbals district of Glasgow would have been a byword for inner-city deprivation and crime. Against this background, a Christlike figure of The Stranger appears, raises a young suicide from the dead, later to die himself at the hands of a suspicious populace.
In preparation for its first revival in over fifty years, by the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2014, Ben Earle revisited the score and material of the ballet and has created an authoritative critical edition, not only providing valuable historic background to an extraordinary piece of dance theatre but also addressing problems presented by the manuscript, discrepancies with Lambert's performance score, the parts, the already published piano score and the evidence of early recordings.
It is published and engraved complete for the first time, with an Introduction and full Commentary.
Ben Earle is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Birmingham.
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