Bel Air Classiques: BAC026

Boesmans: Julie

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Boesmans: Julie

Directed by Luc Bondy, sets by Richard Peduzzi, costumes by Rudy Sabounghi, Aix-en Provence 2005

Malena Ernman (Julie), Gary Magee (Jean) & Kerstin Avemo (Kristin)

Chamber Orchestra of la Monnaie, Kazushi Ono

Boesmans and his librettist Luc Bondy have based their intimate chamber opera on Miss Julie, Strindberg's classic 1888 drama of destructive passion between mistress and servant. Julie is a complex interplay of sex and class, with the haunting power of the past a catalyst to tragedy. On Midsummer's Night, a time for wild celebration, Julie works on Jean to draw him away from his fiancée Christine. But the events on shortest night of the year throw into relief the destructive ambitions of them both: 'It is dangerous to play with fire…'. Although Boesmans is a major figure in mainland Europe, his four operas have an impressively successful track record across the Channel, he is virtually unknown on the British operatic stage. His music is highly individual: dense and precise, rich and colourful, elegant, and in this piece, he makes a chamber ensemble of eighteen players sound positively symphonic.

Very good review for the MTW production in Opera magazine August 2007: “The economy of the opera - lasting just 70 minutes and using only three singers - belies the richness of its allusions and its intensity of emotional insight. Boesman’s musical language is contemporary yet it draws on a lyrical tradition of the past: his setting of Luc Bondy’s and Marie- Louise Bischofberger’s libretto is highly effective…This staging of Philippe Boesman’s chamber opera, first seen in Brussels in 2005, was the British debut of not only Julie, but of any Boesman’s opera. For that alone Music Theatre Wales should take huge credit. It seems extraordinary that a composer of such accomplishment has not been heard here, but that’s the lazy, safe game that companies play.”