July 12, 2007
In its beginnings, chamber opera was the embodiment of English practicality and the need for the adaptation of form to venue. Phillipe Boesmans’ Julie is almost a full circle of adaptation with a nineteenth-century play becoming a twenty first-century opera through this stripped-down twentieth-century medium. Strindberg’s Miss Julie has been adapted operatically twice previously so perhaps it does not need to be said that its obsessions with sex and power make it a natural choice for the operatic stage. It is a story, the composer of this adaptation admits, that is undoubtedly Wagnerian.
This English-language production by Music Theatre Wales marks its composer’s British operatic debut. It is perhaps not brusque enough to be honestly described as a short sharp shock, but this dense, thrilling piece that lasts merely an hour and a quarter is far from a sweet and mild musical entertainment.
The libretto, whose English translation is by Anna Herklotz, is uncomplicated as it is dramatic. The social aspects of Miss Julie that have been so prevalent in recent adaptations of the play by Patrick Marber and Frank McGuiness are largely stripped from this piece in a way that foregrounds the suitability of the story to operatic interpretation. Deprived of the status of exemplars of their respective classes, Julie and Jean are naked operatic types, and Christine, the serving-girl to whom Jean is betrothed is flagged as the true hero, with occasional spoken lines within the music serving to break the fourth wall in a way that keeps us as the audience in her confidence.
The staging, which places the action on a framed platform in front of the ensemble leaves one under no allusion that the action and the libretto serve to bring the audience closer to the music, despite separating one from the other. With just eighteen players, Michael Rafferty conducting Music Theatre Wales delivers Boesmans’ massively powerful, undulating and often chilling music in a way that is too strong and loud to be described with the all too inevitable for chamber opera ‘intimate’. It is, rather, unusually open and, despite the musicians being behind the set and the singers, foregrounded.
The three singers are on top form, although the phrasing of Emma Gane as Christine is sometimes swallowed up by the louder parts of the score. The earliest settings out of the plot’s major themes are perhaps the most powerfully understated moments one has seen in contemporary opera. Jean’s ‘I knew I would never play with the Count’s daughter and I wanted to die’ is a harsh, bittersweet and ultimately ironic foreshadowing of the fate of the characters at the end of the opera, and the sleeptalking of Christine that directly follows it is so wonderfully exciting and tantalising and should fill every audience member with anticipation.
This English-language production by Music Theatre Wales marks its composer’s British operatic debut. It is perhaps not brusque enough to be honestly described as a short sharp shock, but this dense, thrilling piece that lasts merely an hour and a quarter is far from a sweet and mild musical entertainment.
The libretto, whose English translation is by Anna Herklotz, is uncomplicated as it is dramatic. The social aspects of Miss Julie that have been so prevalent in recent adaptations of the play by Patrick Marber and Frank McGuiness are largely stripped from this piece in a way that foregrounds the suitability of the story to operatic interpretation. Deprived of the status of exemplars of their respective classes, Julie and Jean are naked operatic types, and Christine, the serving-girl to whom Jean is betrothed is flagged as the true hero, with occasional spoken lines within the music serving to break the fourth wall in a way that keeps us as the audience in her confidence.
The staging, which places the action on a framed platform in front of the ensemble leaves one under no allusion that the action and the libretto serve to bring the audience closer to the music, despite separating one from the other. With just eighteen players, Michael Rafferty conducting Music Theatre Wales delivers Boesmans’ massively powerful, undulating and often chilling music in a way that is too strong and loud to be described with the all too inevitable for chamber opera ‘intimate’. It is, rather, unusually open and, despite the musicians being behind the set and the singers, foregrounded.
The three singers are on top form, although the phrasing of Emma Gane as Christine is sometimes swallowed up by the louder parts of the score. The earliest settings out of the plot’s major themes are perhaps the most powerfully understated moments one has seen in contemporary opera. Jean’s ‘I knew I would never play with the Count’s daughter and I wanted to die’ is a harsh, bittersweet and ultimately ironic foreshadowing of the fate of the characters at the end of the opera, and the sleeptalking of Christine that directly follows it is so wonderfully exciting and tantalising and should fill every audience member with anticipation.