Bliss: Miracle in the Gorbals / Metamorphic Variations

Although perhaps overshadowed today by his earlier ballet “Checkmate”, “Miracle in the Gorbals” was a great success for Arthur Bliss and the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company. It premiered in 1944 and was repeated every season until 1950. Based on a scenario by Michael Benthall (inspired by Jerome K. Jerome and Fyodor Dostoevsky), the ballet depicts the appearance of a Christ-like figure in Glasgow’s notorious slums. This mysterious stranger performs a miracle and brings back to life a girl who had thrown herself into the Clyde in despair. The locals cheer, but an official (Benthall had a priest in mind) is jealous and allows a gang to stab the stranger after he has unsuccessfully tried to sow doubt about his virtue through the local prostitute. Bliss’s score makes use of a variety of styles and harmonic devices and also employs leitmotifs for the main characters. Bliss’s “Metamorphic Variations”, originally known as “Variations for Orchestra”, were composed towards the end of his life during a late creative period. Two of the 16 movements were cut at the premiere (by the LSO and Vernon Handley in 1973) and for some reason were not reinstated in any subsequent performance of the work until Michael Seal and the BBC Philharmonic added them back to the programme in February 2025, one day before this recording.