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Intent on wreaking destruction ... Cheryl Enever as Juliana (with Samuel Pantcheff as Juan) in Joseph Phibb’s chamber opera premiered at the Cheltenham festival.
Intent on wreaking destruction … Cheryl Enever as Juliana and Samuel Pantcheff as Juan
Intent on wreaking destruction … Cheryl Enever as Juliana and Samuel Pantcheff as Juan

Juliana review - Miss Julie reworking makes for a convincing, effective new opera

This article is more than 5 years old

Parabola Arts Centre, Cheltenham
Joseph Phibbs and Laurie Slade’s spare and coherent chamber opera updates Strindberg’s claustrophobic three-hander to the present day, with Cheryl Enever compelling in the title role

In the UK, new productions of Miss Julie easily outnumber those of all of August Strindberg’s dozen other plays put together, and composers looking for likely subjects for an opera among his works have been drawn to it almost as exclusively, too. Juliana, Joseph Phibbs’ 80-minute reworking, with a libretto by Laurie Slade, is at least the fourth attempt to create a music drama from this claustrophobic three-hander, following versions by William Alwyn, Ned Rorem and Philippe Boesmans.

The title is the first indication that Phibbs and Slade have put their own spin on the drama. Like many stagings of the play, they update the action, which still takes place in a grand house in Sweden on midsummer night, but in the 21st century rather than the 19th. Instead of being a nobleman, Juliana’s unseen but constantly menacing father, the Boss, is a successful businessman, who, before the opera begins, has been driven to the airport for a foreign trip. The lonely and bored Juliana has been left to her own devices in the mansion, to talk to her pet canary and to flirt with Juan, her father’s Bolivian chauffeur.

Juliana and Juan drink, snort coke, dance and eventually have sex. The tragedy that follows the next morning is presented more or less as it is in Strindberg, though the protagonists are given new backstories with more contemporary relevance, and the housekeeper Kerstin becomes a choric figure, commenting on the action and also describing the deaths of a young couple in a speedboat on the lake outside. It’s a spare, unfussy treatment of the drama. There’s little here of the Darwinian battle for survival that so preoccupied Strindberg, while Julie/Juliana’s sadomasochism only occasionally surfaces. In many ways this seems less about power and class than two individuals, each profoundly damaged by their past, and both intent on wreaking as much destruction as possible.

Fatal menace... Samuel Pantcheff as Juan

Slade’s economical text never draws attention to itself. It’s never unnecessarily difficult to sing, allowing Phibbs to match the words to meaningful lyrical lines rather than being forced to fall back on declamation. It’s a genuinely pleasant surprise to find a new opera in which virtually every word gains extra clarity and meaning through the way in which it has been set. The pace of the music varies convincingly – languorous to start, before quickening and becoming more motoric when Juan appears, throwing in something vaguely Latin American (part flamenco, part tango) when the couple dance, and erupting into a wild, aggressive jig when they make love – with each character given their own instrumental sound world within the eight-piece ensemble.

Juliana is that rare thing nowadays, a genuinely well-made, effective new opera that achieves exactly what it sets out to do. Nova Music Opera’s production, directed by Richard Williams and conducted by George Vass, does what’s required, and the three singers do a bit more than that. Soprano Cheryl Enever is compelling as Juliana, a lost soul who will grab on to any lifeline she’s offered. Mezzo Rebecca Afonwy-Jones is Kerstin, providing the only stability in this emotionally anarchic menage. Bass Samuel Pantcheff is Juan, who could seem more attractively dangerous than he does, though his fatal menace comes through in the end.

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