Music of iron and bronze, appropriate to its Trojan War setting—of fanfares and percussion tattoos, but with plangent windows of orchestral and vocal beauty—Tippett’s second opera is unlike his first in every respect except that of the immediacy and fullness with which it portrays the feelings and predicaments of a variety of characters. We understand the warmth and anxiety of Andromache, the majestic command of Hecuba and the erotic charge that runs through Helen—the Trojan women who come toget...