Sir Michael Tippett

A composer of operas, chamber and solo pieces, symphonies, and choral works, Tippett was influenced not only by the classics, but also by jazz and folk music. He expressed his pacifist views in the popular oratorio A Child of Our Time (1944) and gave opera its first gay couple in The Knot Garden (1970). Tippett is most renowned for his five operas and wrote his own librettos (taking the personal advice of poet T.S. Eliot). His autobiography, Those Twentieth-Century Blues, was published in 1991.