The opera's commission is mentioned in the Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Arts Council of Great Britain: "Sadler's Wells Opera revived Monteverdi's Orfeo (in Italian) and presented new productions of Berlioz' Damnation of Faust, Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience, Malcolm Williamson's Lucky Peter's Journey (commissioned under the Gulbenkian Foundation's scheme), Wagner's Valkyrie and, to mark the bicentenary, Beethoven's Leonora - hardly a routine list .
He and Stephen Arlen in planning for the 1967 season at Sadler's Wells considered what work they might present in operetta, a form that was successful with "both company and its audience."
They thought about "commissioning a lightweight work from a living composer--something unpretentious, which could be easily learnt and performed by the company and which might have a wide appeal.
"[4] At Williamson's suggestion Tracey read Strindberg's Lycko-Pers Resa and was "immediately captivated by it, and excited to find that it contained features that I had included in [his first libretto for the commission] Dick Whittington: various rapid and virtually unexplained changes in scene, vivid contrasts of physical temperature--the whole action begins on a midwinter night and moves through spring into high summer--plenty of interesting small parts for the company, and above all the theme of a young hero questing for truth and happiness, rather like Tamino in The Magic Flute.
"[4] Aspects of pantomime were already in Lycko-Pers Resa, specifically two comedic parts that they gave to two women as a "sister act," rather than the two male clowns traditionally found in pantomime, "April Cantelo and Jennifer Vyvyan, for whom the composer wanted to write large parts ... the two sopranos are required to be two rats in the church tower, two birds in the forest, two gold diggers in the pleasure-dome and two martyred saints in the last act by the sea-shore.
"[4] The composer describes the opera, saying "... we have, to put it at its simplest, a pair of lovers (mezzo-soprano and baritone, contrary to the usual procedure).
The two male comics who permeate the panto are realized by two coloratura sopranos who are constantly reappearing as different characters.
A good fairy and a gnome are the magic collaborators who propel the machinery of the narrative, and there is Peter's guide who indulges him, advises him, and leads him through the Land of Pleasure.
He escapes on Christmas Eve and starts the process of discovering hard truths about power, corruption, vulnerability ... finding redemption in the end, through selfless love.
Librettist Edmund Tracey describes the story he wrote and its characters: "The story of Lucky Peter's Journey starts on Christmas Eve ... in the course of the action [Peter] meets the girl, Lisa, without being able to express selfless emotion for her; acquires great wealth and political power; is offered spurious love and friendship by two professional vamps; tries to give himself up to nature; and finally has recourse to organized religion.
Loki decides to punish Staffan for his missed porridge meal by helping Peter escape and he calls the Good Fairy who appears.
But first Peter must lead the poor and unemployed, the rich man's victims, as their Caliph, which he does, claiming to be the enemy of corruption, a reformer who will sweep the land clean.
He removes the turban, throws it away, and renounces his leadership, cursing the crowd's gold, women, and power, calling the Steward a High Priest of lies.
Peter walks along the beach littered with driftwood and ship wreckage considering himself a castaway, having decided that the world is false and hollow.
The Wise Man tells of his life when he left a bitter relationship only to be bewitched by the Christmas Ghosts (who are the Good Fairy and Loki, who now appear).
Loki confesses to the Good Fairy that he lied about the porridge, the rats ate it, so now they must try to put things right.
Lisa reveals herself and they fall in each other's arms and declare their love for each other while the Wise Man emerges from the shrine--it is Staffan, Peter's father.
The original play was pure fantasy, and Tracey had tried to introduce some realism, but neither children nor grown-ups in the audience enjoyed it.
Williamson gave his son and his classmates an "outing ... very kindly offered to all as a Christmas juant..." Ms. Wright says, "The work, based on a play by Strindberg, was pretty standard fare – not wonderful, but not terrible either, and I was more intrigued by the staging than the music ... Lucky Peter’s Journey was the Coliseum’s ‘panto’ – without the classic panto trappings.
"[13] Stephen Walsh, writing a review in The Observer, says the opera's idiom, like its predecessors, "is deliberately popular, and whatever you may say about this strange fusion of a Strauss-type symphonic texture with point numbers in the tradition of Richard Rodgers, you have to allow it two basic attributes: first, its undoubted appeal to a certain class of opera-goer; secondly, its very strong (even oppressive) individuality, which removes any doubt about [Williamson's] sincerity in writing it."
He goes on to clarify the opera has a moral: "love is the only thing in life that mankind can both see and trust; and since this is a Christmas moral, the opera and the play, starts at Christmas-time, and reminds us that behind all human happiness is sadness and beneath all good motives a bad, selfish ones of which only true, self-forgetting love is free."
Dacre Punt's sets, most beautifully lit by Francis Reid are a model of how to get maximum value from a minimum of solid objects, with the chorus and so-called Movement Group brilliantly used as part of the scenery to suggest locality or season.
On the immediate criterion of a good, lively entertainment, children may well find this tedious as compared with other 'shows'; and if a small, naïve voice were to pipe up with 'But why aren't there any funny songs?'
Balancing his review, Jacobs says positively that "the music shows Williamson's remarkable facility: that is, readiness to find suitable moods, contrasts of pace, a jolly strain of intendedly 'popular' appeal, an exotic and picturesque touch ..." Yet Jacobs nonetheless argues that "the quality of 'engagement' and intensity is less clear ... what is the dramatic point of the change of idiom?"
[1] In Opera magazine, Christopher Webber says "Williamson was a magpie whose eclecticism worried critics much more than it did performers or audiences."
"[15] A web site devoted to the British soprano Jennifer Vyvyan (authorized by her estate and curated by Michael White), who performed in several of Williamson's opera premières including Lucky Peter's Journey, calls the opera an "easy-listening (and happier) fairy tale for Christmas.
Designed as a Sadlers Wells show for children, with a breezy fluency that owed something to Menotti although toughened up by spiky Tippett-like rigour ..."[9] BBC Radio 3's broadcast from 5 February 1970 was issued by the Oriel Music Trust[16] in 2013 on two CDs (OMT 932), including the spoken introductions.