SUPER AUDIO CD Alwyn Miss Julie

Anna Patalong soprano Rosie Aldridge mezzo-soprano Samuel Sakker tenor Benedict Nelson bass-baritone

Sakari Oramo William Alwyn,1978

Courtesy of The William Alwyn Foundation William Alwyn (1905 – 1985)

Miss Julie (1973 – 76)

An Opera in Two Acts Based on the Play by August Strindberg (1849 – 1912)

Libretto by William Alwyn

Miss Julie...... Anna Patalong soprano Jean, the Count’s valet...... Benedict Nelson bass-baritone Kristin, the cook...... Rosie Aldridge mezzo-soprano Ulrik, the gamekeeper...... Samuel Sakker tenor

The action takes place in the Count’s country house in Sweden on Midsummer Night in 1895.

BBC Symphony Orchestra Igor Yuzefovich leader Sakari Oramo

3 COMPACT DISC ONE

Acte I Scene 1 25:40 1 [Orchestral Introduction.] Allegro. Valse Tempo – A tempo, grazioso – 1:04 2 Jean: ‘Miss Julie is crazy’ – 1:36 3 Kristin: ‘But the Count...’ – 4:41 4 Jean: ‘By God, I’m thirsty!’ – 3:18 5 Miss Julie: ‘Kristin, Kristin, Kristin!’ – 2:28 6 Jean: ‘Well, I’ve travelled around’ – 4:28 7 Miss Julie: ‘There’s a new dance starting’ – 2:01 8 Miss Julie: ‘You know why I came here tonight?’ – 1:48 9 Miss Julie: ‘Midsummer Night, O, night of magic’ – 3:38 10 Kristin: ‘I’m ready, Jean!’ 0:34

4 Scene 2 35:14 11 [Orchestral Introduction.] Andante sostenuto (Poco adagio) – Poco più mosso (a tempo di valse) – Andante sostenuto – Poco più mosso – Più mosso – Tempo I – Meno mosso – Più mosso (Poco allegretto) – 2:32 12 Jean: ‘Kristin, Kristin...’ – 3:45 13 Miss Julie: ‘Now you can kiss my hand’ – 2:33 14 Jean: ‘That wouldn’t do, either’ – 3:51 15 Jean: ‘I have no time for dreams’ – 2:02 16 Miss Julie: ‘Would you like me to dance’ – 0:52 17 Jean: ‘Playing with fire’ – 1:57 18 Jean: ‘You don’t know what it is to be poor’ – 1:42 19 Miss Julie: ‘But you can rise, Jean’ – 1:55 20 Ulrik: ‘“A lady went a-roaming...”’ – 3:00 21 Ulrik: ‘She’s the queen of the dance’ – 1:52 22 Jean: ‘You can come out now’ – 1:51 23 Jean: ‘I know, I know...’ – 4:02 24 Jean: ‘I can’t, not while we’re still in this house’ 3:15 TT 60:59

5 COMPACT DISC TWO

Act II 1 [Orchestral Introduction.] Lento – Allegro non troppo – Poco più mosso – Lento ma non troppo – 2:37 2 Jean: ‘Never again!’ – 3:32 3 Jean: ‘Now don’t lose your head’ – 3:34 4 Miss Julie: ‘Scum on the surface of water’ – 3:20 5 Miss Julie: ‘If you want me again’ – 4:06 6 Jean: ‘If I only had enough money...’ – 2:35 7 Miss Julie: ‘You sound so cruel, Jean’ – 1:36 8 [Orchestral Interlude.] Allegro precipitoso – Poco meno mosso, ma sempre allegro – 0:59 9 Kristin: ‘Has she gone?’ – 0:47 10 Kristin: ‘Whatever you say, I know you were here with the mistress’ – 1:38 11 Kristin: ‘Class is class, and don’t you forget it’ – 1:22 12 Kristin: ‘We’ll get married’ – 1:02

6 13 Ulrik: ‘A pretty domestic scene!’ – 1:05 14 Kristin: ‘I knew I was right!’ – 1:40 15 Kristin: ‘There’s someone upstairs’ – 1:45 16 Miss Julie: ‘I’m ready now, Jean’ – 2:07 17 Jean: ‘What the devil is that?’ – 1:51 18 Miss Julie: ‘He’s killed her, killed her!’ – 2:33 19 Kristin: ‘You’re mad! You’re both mad!’ – 4:55 20 Kristin: ‘Well, well! So you’re going to elope!’ – 1:15 21 Jean: ‘The Count’s back!’ – 1:09 22 Jean: ‘You can go, but I can’t’ – 3:56 23 Miss Julie: ‘I must be dreaming’ – 2:30 24 Miss Julie: ‘Kiss me... before I go!’ 1:58 TT 54:03

7 Andrew Palmer Andrew Palmer Alwyn: Miss Julie

Alwyn and opera to his heart, and writing (both poetry and At the age of thirty-two, dissatisfied with prose), painting, and drawing soon assumed his music and determined to discover and a new significance in his life. However, these refine a mature compositional style, William activities remained secondary to music, and Alwyn (1905 – 1985) made a break with his his ‘Blythburgh years’ saw the composition of past by withdrawing all his unpublished the Fifth Symphony (unrelated to the previous works. Twenty-three years later, in 1961, he four), the Sinfonietta for Strings, a flute concerto, did something similarly radical, though for a song cycles, and two string quartets. Above all, different reason: he left his wife, home, and he was able to devote his creative energies to professional contacts in London to begin a new opera. life in Blythburgh, Suffolk with the composer By this stage of his career Alwyn was Doreen Carwithen (1922 – 2003), whom he acknowledged as a film composer and later married. By then he had resigned from his symphonist – probably in that order – but not teaching professorship at the Royal Academy of as an opera composer. Yet opera had been of Music, had completed an ambitious cycle of four lifelong interest to him. He had written his first symphonies, and had realised that he no longer operatic work, The Fairy Fiddler, while a teenage wanted to write film scores; so his career was student at the Royal Academy of Music, and already altering course. But in relocating to the had subsequently played the flute in British Suffolk coast, he took the additional step of opera houses, conducted performances of abandoning artistic life in the capital. Die Zauberflöte and the British première of Because Alwyn had no intention of giving Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri, and, at up composition, this punctuation mark in his the request of Sir John Barbirolli, completed the career was not a full stop. But it was more orchestration of Hugo Wolf’s Der Corregidor. His than a comma; it was the beginning of a new experience as a film composer was arguably paragraph. He now had the necessary time even more relevant. The short documentaries and tranquillity to work at his own pace on with which he had begun his cinematic career ‘non-commercial’ projects that were close were, he recalled,

10 made on seemingly impossible budgets which reference to a detailed synopsis or programme strained all my ingenuity and resources to note; arias should serve a dramatic purpose conjure the best possible music from the rather than merely provide opportunities smallest possible means. For the first time it for vocal display; for the sake of dramatic really made me stop and think how essential is coherence, characters should sing only to one the possession of an unflawed technique for another and not to the audience in asides or the proper realisation of one’s creative ideas. soliloquies; the use of ensembles should be It was this realisation, in fact, that had minimised in order to maintain aural clarity; persuaded him to withdraw his concert music and, most importantly, the text should be set and to start again. to vocal lines that reproduce the rhythms and Meanwhile he had discovered that inflections of speech. film music could do more than establish It is possible that some of these ideas were characterisation, suggest mood, and heighten suggested by the plays of August Strindberg atmosphere: in some cases it could also (1849 – 1912), which Alwyn had discovered at communicate the unspoken thoughts of an around the time that he started to compose onscreen character even when these were film music and which he soon came to believe at odds with what he or she was presenting were ideal subjects for the kind of operatic visually. ‘Film music’, Alwyn explained, adaptation he wanted to make. Strindberg is essentially dramatic music. Not had promoted a concept of naturalistic drama descriptive music (the visuals and sound featuring flesh-and-blood characters whose effects should take care of that), but music psychological weaknesses led them into life- which functions to point the dramatic altering conflict, and this must have reminded atmosphere of the film – which adds one Alwyn of the verismo operas of Puccini and more emotional plane to an attack which is Mascagni, which he loved. But the need to already being made on the visual sense. earn a living by teaching and by composing for The parallels with operatic composition were films, not to mention the general interruption not lost on him, and in the course of writing to life caused by the Second World War, meant music for approximately two hundred films he that it was not until twenty years later, after had formulated theories of how the medium having completed two of his planned cycle of of opera could be revitalised, both musically four symphonies and an opera for BBC Radio and dramatically. His conclusions were that (Farewell Companions), that he began serious the action should be self-explanatory, without work on adapting Miss Julie.

11 His friend Christopher Hassall supplied a Strindberg had been influenced during his libretto, but the collaboration foundered on ‘naturalistic’ period by Darwinism, and in the what Alwyn described as Hassall’s play he explored theories of evolution through insistence on steadfast adherence to the the prisms of social class and gender. Miss original play and my own obstinate desire to Julie, a representative of the intransigent and dispense with all inessential detail, symbolism near-extinct aristocracy, was enmeshed in and moralising, and to retain only the dramatic a battle for survival against the ambitious Strindbergian substance of the play. servant class that was willing to adapt by An opera, he maintained, is not merely a play seizing opportunities that life offered; she with action that is ‘spasmodically underlined’ also embodied Strindberg’s concept of the by music; on the contrary, music should ‘modern woman’ who was destined to fail in the condition both words and action. The project struggle for equality with men. The play might was therefore abandoned – for a further twenty therefore seem an unlikely choice of subject for years, until Alwyn, settled into semi-retirement Alwyn the unashamed romantic, even allowing in Blythburgh, yielded to the urge to compose a for his prima la musica approach to operatic full-length opera for the stage. composition; yet he found the fate of Miss First came Juan, or The Libertine, based on Julie tragic and fell ‘hopelessly in love with her’ James Elroy Flecker’s play Don Juan as well as on during the three years in which he wrote the Baudelaire, Byron, Molière, Nietzsche, and Shaw, opera. and as soon as this was completed, in 1971, he The reason why he was able to see beyond returned to Miss Julie. This time he wrote his own the anti-romantic nature of the play is the libretto, condensing Strindberg’s text, replacing depth of its characters. ‘It is one of those verbal symbolism with musical themes and dramatic narratives’, wrote Rodney Milnes motifs, and – more controversially – introducing in the essay accompanying the first studio a new character. Ulrik, the gamekeeper, acts as recording of the opera, substitute for Strindberg’s chorus of villagers, in which the words themselves are but the tip whose presence in the opera Alwyn believed of the iceberg; in virtually every sentence the would appear contrived, even clumsy; he was characters say only about a quarter of what also convinced that the absence of a chorus they mean. would heighten the claustrophobic, hot-house Most of the rest is symbolism, of which Alwyn atmosphere in which the doomed relationship had twenty-five years’ experience as a film between the two main characters takes place. composer.

12 More surprising, perhaps, is that he set Some of the score’s subtleties are purely an intimate, chamber-like drama (featuring musical. The rhythm of the waltz permeates four soloists, no chorus, and only one set) the opera and initially illustrates the carefree to music of passionately symphonic sweep. excitement of Midsummer Night festivities, but His move to Suffolk had in part been a retreat subsequent harmonic distortions reveal the from what he believed was a hostile or at least extent of the nightmare that the protagonists unsympathetic musical establishment, one are creating for themselves. The emotional that dismissed his romanticism as outdated instability of Miss Julie is suggested by high- and rarely challenged the stigmatisation of lying vocal lines that are only loosely attached ‘film composers’; but because these attitudes to a tonal ‘centre’, while her eventual trance- have softened since his death we can see that like state is evoked by music resembling that the qualities that made him so successful in of the ‘hallucination scenes’ (often featuring cinematic music are particularly well-suited celeste and tremolando strings in uncertain to the composition of opera. If the score tonalities) for which Alwyn the film composer of Miss Julie sounds to some listeners too was renowned. And two particular musical ‘cinematic’, this is surely because Alwyn intervals or chords feature throughout the intended film music and operatic music to score: the seventh, denoting yearning and fulfil similar dramatic functions. unresolved desire; and the augmented triad, He stated that by far the most important the dissonance of which symbolises the lesson he learned as a film composer was unrelieved conflict among all four characters. the dramatic use of music in relation to the The latter is used most overtly in sinister, bell- spoken word, and in Miss Julie he deployed like form at almost every mention of the Count – techniques that he had honed during many the malevolent fifth character in the opera, who years of reading scripts and watching dialogue is neither seen nor heard but whose implied being spoken on screen. The most obvious are presence dominates the action. the recurring three-note motif based on the Alwyn attained a mastery of orchestration, rhythm of the name ‘Miss-Ju-lie’, the insistent atmosphere, timing, and word-setting; and ostinato figures that drive home the meaning nowhere is it more evident than in this, the of particularly significant phrases, and the second of his two ‘Blythburgh operas’ (and echoing (or pre-echoing) of vocal lines that his final work for full orchestra), which was adds emphasis after (or before) they are completed in 1976 and first performed for a sung. BBC studio recording the following year. Yet

13 it has received only one staged production – engaged to Jean, is waiting for him to take her directed by Benjamin Luxon, the original Jean, to the dance. Meanwhile she stirs the contents at the Norwich Theatre Royal in 1997. ‘An opera of a saucepan on the stove: a potion for Miss is written for the theatre’, Alwyn wrote at the Julie’s lap-dog, on heat, that will keep other time of the original BBC performance, ‘and dogs away. must be good theatre as well as good music’; When he returns to the kitchen, Jean has and the sureness of his theatrical instinct already been to the barn and has danced with was confirmed by the audience response Miss Julie, whom he found in the arms of Ulrik, to the concert performance at the Barbican the gamekeeper. She has, Jean and Kristin Hall, London, in October 2019 that preceded agree, become ‘utterly crazy’ since her mother the current recording. The following morning, took her own life. Jean brazenly opens a bottle the critic for The Times, ‘still reeling’ from the of the Count’s wine that he has stolen, then experience, was left wondering, starts to make love to Kristin. Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, They are interrupted by the entry of Miss claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been Julie, ostensibly enquiring about the potion but so neglected since its 1977 premiere? hoping to lure Jean back to the barn. The erotic tension between them begins to increase, © 2020 Andrew Palmer and she tells Kristin to go and change for the dance. She then sings seductively to Jean Synopsis about Midsummer Night and persuades him The opera is set in the kitchen of the country not to wait for Kristin. house of a widowed count in Sweden, at the end of the nineteenth century, and the action Act I, Scene 2 takes place on Midsummer Night. It is after midnight when Jean and Miss Julie return from the barn. She alternately taunts Act I, Scene 1 him about his peasant background and The Count’s staff and servants are celebrating provokes him sexually. When he eventually Midsummer at a dance in a nearby barn. The kisses her she is shocked and slaps his face, Count is spending the night at his sister’s, but does not leave. His pride dented, he starts having been driven there by his valet, Jean, and to polish the Count’s boots, but she orders him has left his daughter, Miss Julie, in charge of to stop and they soon fall into each other’s the house. Kristin, the cook, who is unofficially arms.

14 Ulrik is heard approaching the kitchen, Miss Julie comes back downstairs, dressed drunk and singing an innuendo-laden song for travel and with a suitcase in one hand. about them. Jean has just enough time to hide Under her other arm is her dog, which Jean Miss Julie in his bedroom before Ulrik lurches grabs and hands to Ulrik to dispose of outside. in, demanding to have his own fun with her. A gunshot is heard, and Miss Julie collapses, Everyone knows that she has fallen for Jean, he distraught, while Jean and Kristin hurl reveals, and they are ‘laughing their heads off’. accusations at each other. When Ulrik has left, Miss Julie emerges The ominous ringing of the kitchen bell angry, ashamed, and terrified of the Count’s announces that the Count has returned, and reaction. She has no option but to run away, Miss Julie watches helplessly as Jean begins and Jean sees an opportunity to put a to put on his uniform. ‘That bell rules my life!’, long-cherished plan into action: they will go he apologises. As for their hotel in Lugano, together, and open a hotel in Lugano. They it was merely a dream on Midsummer Night. must leave by daybreak, before the Count Half-crazed, she asks him what she should do. returns, and meanwhile she can spend the He suggests that there is a way out, the way night with him. that her mother took: suicide. The bell rings again, and Jean callously pushes Miss Julie Act II aside before climbing the stairs. She picks It is dawn, and Jean emerges triumphant from up his razor from the table (in the concert his bedroom. Miss Julie already regrets what performance on which this recording is based, has happened but is forced to agree to his plan, the deadly agent was Kristin’s potion), then which, she now realises, is dependent on her walks slowly and steadily out into the park. stealing money from the Count. She eventually © 2020 Andrew Palmer obeys and goes upstairs. Kristin enters, and notices two glasses on All extracts from Alwyn’s writings are reproduced here by the table. Disbelieving Jean when he says that permission of the William Alwyn Foundation. he was drinking with Ulrik, she announces that she will avoid the scandal by handing in her notice, after which she and Jean will get Trained at the Guildhall School of Music and married. ‘I’ve got more ambition than that!’ he Drama, where she won numerous awards, Anna sneers. Ulrik returns to apologise for his earlier Patalong was a finalist at the Kathleen Ferrier behaviour but soon begins to fight with Jean. Awards, Francisco Viñas International Singing

15 Competition, and International Stanisław Children and Britten’s Spring Symphony at Moniuszko Vocal Competition. In 2017 she Salisbury Cathedral‚ Haydn’s Nelson Mass with received a bursary from the International Opera the Royal Northern Sinfonia, and a recital of Awards and a Richard Angas Memorial Award. French song at Wigmore Hall. Her studies were supported by the Susan Chilcott Foundation‚ Musicians Benevolent The British baritone Benedict Nelson was an Fund‚ Serena Fenwick, and Harold Hyam inaugural Harewood Artist with English National Wingate Foundation. She has sung Violetta Opera, where his roles included Valentin (La traviata) at Festival Opera, New Zealand and (Faust), Demetrius (A Midsummer Night’s Longborough Festival Opera‚ Gilda (Rigoletto) Dream), Belcore (The Elixir of Love), Count and the title role in Suor Angelica at Opera (The Marriage of Figaro), Figaro (The Barber of Holland Park‚ Nedda (Pagliacci) at Scottish Seville), Ping (Turandot), and the title role in Opera‚ Brigitta (Iolanta) at Opéra national de Billy Budd. He has sung Britten’s Gloriana at Paris‚ Flowermaiden (Parsifal) at The Royal Teatro Real in Madrid, The Colonel (Mark- Opera, Covent Garden‚ Magda (La rondine), Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie) with the Marguerite (Faust), and Tatyana (Eugene BBC Symphony Orchestra, Algernon Moncrieff Onegin) at Dorset Opera Festival‚ Liù (Turandot) (Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest) and Adina (L’elisir d’amore) at Northern Ireland at The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and Aeneas Opera‚ Mimì (La bohème) at Opera Holland (Dido and Aeneas) at Teatro Regio di Torino, Park and in Rouen and Lübeck‚ Woglinde Salzburger Festspiele, Verbier Festival, and in (Das Rheingold) at Ruhrtriennale‚ Ino (Silvia Wiesbaden. He has also performed Ned Keene Colasanti’s Proserpine) at the Spoleto Festival (Peter Grimes) at Opéra national de Lyon and dei due Mondi, Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) at Opera North, Silvano (Un ballo in maschera) the Tobacco Factory, Bristol, and Ännchen at Opera Holland Park, Don Giovanni with (Der Freischütz) in Limoges. Anna Patalong has Silent Opera, Marcello (La bohème), Sid (Albert appeared in concert at an Opera Spectacular Herring), and Tarquinius (The Rape of Lucretia) with the Hallé at Bridgewater Hall, Christmas at Angers-Nantes Opéra, and Ananias Spectaculars for Raymond Gubbay and in (The Burning Fiery Furnace) for Scottish Opera Bridgewater Hall and Birmingham Symphony at the Lammermuir Festival. Additionally Hall‚ in Vivaldi’s Gloria and Magnificat at the he has sung Figaro (Il barbiere di Siviglia) at Royal Albert Hall‚ Beethoven’s Missa solemnis Glyndebourne Festival Opera and Jean (William at Gloucester Cathedral‚ Rutter’s Mass of the Alwyn’s Miss Julie) with the BBC Symphony

16 Orchestra under Sakari Oramo, and is soon at Glyndebourne Festival Opera as the Lady in to sing Demetrius at Wiener Staatsoper. On Waiting (Macbeth), at Teatro Real, Madrid as a the concert platform Benedict Nelson has Blumenmädchen (Parsifal) and as Roßweiße performed with the Orquestra Gulbenkian, (Die Walküre), at Opéra national de Lorraine as Scottish Opera, Edinburgh International Nellie Dean (Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights), Festival, City of Birmingham Symphony and at English National Opera as Third Lady Orchestra, Hallé, and Orchestre philharmonique (The Magic Flute), Gertrud (Hänsel and Gretel) de Radio France. and Aksinya, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov.

A graduate of the Benjamin Britten International Winner of The Wagner Society Singing Opera School at the Royal College of Music Competition, the tenor Samuel Sakker has and a Jerwood Young Artist at Glyndebourne performed leading roles with opera companies Festival Opera in 2010, Rosie Aldridge was a and orchestras internationally, notably member of the ensemble at Wiener Staatsoper Laca (Jenůfa) at Opéra de Montréal, Erik from 2016 to 2018, where, among others, she (Der fliegende Holländer) at Opéra de Rennes, sang Annina (Der Rosenkavalier), Aksinya Angers-Nantes Opéra, Nederlandse Reisopera, (Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District), Gertrude and Cape Town Opera, Don José (Carmen) at (Roméo et Juliette), Teresa (La sonnambula), The Royal Danish Opera, Des Grieux (Manon Madame Larina (Eugene Onegin), Marthe Lescaut) at The Grange Festival, Pollione (Faust), Giovanna (Rigoletto), and Roßweiße (Norma) at Melbourne Opera, Laertes in the (Die Walküre), as well as Annina (La traviata) Australian premiere of Brett Dean’s Hamlet in a Gala Performance celebrating the fiftieth at the Adelaide Festival, Federico (Cilea’s anniversary of Plácido Domingo. She made L’arlesiana) and Sergeant Thibault (Delius’s her debut at The Royal Opera, Covent Garden Margot la Rouge) at Opera Holland Park, Tikhon as Praskovya Osipovna, Bubliki, and Social and Boris (Kát’a Kabanová) at Scottish Opera, Commentator (The Nose), returning as Aksinya Alfredo (La traviata) at The Royal Opera, Covent under Sir Antonio Pappano, the Beggar Woman Garden, New Zealand Opera, and Melbourne (Death in Venice), and Angrboda in the world Opera, Florestan (Fidelio) at Lyric Opera Ireland, premiere of Gavin Higgins’s The Monstrous and Ulrik (Alwyn’s Miss Julie) with the BBC Child. At Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo. she made her debut as the Kabanicha (Kát’a In concert Samuel Sakker has performed Kabanová). Rosie Aldridge has also appeared Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Sydney

17 Symphony Orchestra and with the New Zealand Conducting Chair, Sir Andrew Davis and the Philharmonic Orchestra under Donald Runnicles, late Jiří Bělohlávek, its Conductors Laureate, Lili Boulanger’s Faust et Hélène with the Royal as well as Brett Dean, its Artist in Association. Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC The Orchestra regularly performs with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the title role in Liszt’s Symphony Chorus and together they won the Sardanapalo at the Suoni dal Golfo Festival in 2015 Gramophone ‘Best Choral Disc’ Award for Italy, A Child of Our Time with the Bournemouth their recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Symphony Orchestra, Das Lied von der Erde Central to its life are recordings made for at Stadttheater Klagenfurt and with The Royal BBC Radio 3 during sessions at its studios in Ballet and English National Ballet, Beethoven’s Maida Vale, London, some of which are free Ninth Symphony with the Royal Philharmonic for the public to attend. The vast majority of Orchestra, Verdi’s Messa da Requiem at the its concerts are broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Anghiari Festival in Italy, Mozart’s Requiem under streamed live online and available for thirty days Sir Antonio Pappano in Japan, and James Nolan in after broadcast via BBC iPlayer. You can also the inaugural recording of Doctor Atomic with the download BBC programmes onto your mobile BBC Symphony Orchestra under John Adams. or tablet via the BBC iPlayer Radio app. The BBC Symphony Orchestra is committed to The BBC Symphony Orchestra has played a innovative education work, ongoing projects central role in British musical life since its including the BBC’s Ten Pieces, the BBC inception in 1930, providing the backbone of SO Journey through Music scheme which the BBC Proms with around a dozen concerts introduces families to classical music with each year, including the First and Last Nights. pre-concert workshops and discounted tickets, As Associate Orchestra, it performs an annual and the BBC SO Family Orchestra and Chorus. season of concerts at the Barbican Centre, www.bbc.co.uk / symphonyorchestra London. Strongly committed to twentieth- century and contemporary music, it has Recipient of the Conductor of the Year award recently commissioned and premiered works by the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2016, by Richard Ayres, Brett Dean, Unsuk Chin, Sakari Oramo is Chief Conductor of both the Andrew Norman, George Benjamin, and Anna BBC Symphony Orchestra and Royal Stockholm Clyne. It tours throughout the world and has Philharmonic Orchestra. He was Music Director worked regularly with Sakari Oramo, its Chief of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Conductor, Semyon Bychkov, its Günter Wand between 1998 and 2008, Principal Conductor

18 of the West Coast Kokkola Opera between Philharmoniker, and Deutsches Symphonie- 2004 and 2018, and Principal Conductor of the Orchester Berlin, among many others. An Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra from 2013 accomplished violinist, Sakari Oramo was to 2019. After a decade as Chief Conductor of originally leader of the Finnish Radio Symphony the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, he has Orchestra, and in 2014 made his debut in the now served as its Honorary Conductor since BBC Proms Chamber Music series, performing 2012. In recent seasons he has conducted Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins with Janine the Czech Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Jansen. His discography includes a highly Orchester, Orchestra dell’Accademia acclaimed Nielsen symphony cycle as well Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Boston Symphony as recordings of Grieg’s Piano Concerto and Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Berliner Nørgård’s Symphonies Nos 1 and 8.

19 Anna Patalong

Victoria Cadisch Benedict Nelson

© Paul Wilkinson Alwyn: Miss Julie

Alwyn und die Oper diese Zäsur in seiner Laufbahn nicht wirklich Im Alter von zweiunddreißig Jahren brach William ein Punkt, zugleich aber doch mehr als ein Alwyn (1905 – 1985) mit seiner Vergangenheit Komma – es war der Beginn eines neuen und zog alle seine bis dahin unveröffentlichten Abschnitts. Er hatte nun die nötige Zeit Werke aus dem Verkehr; er war mit seiner Musik und Muße, um in seinem eigenen Tempo an nicht zufrieden und beschloss, einen reifen “nicht-kommerziellen” Projekten zu arbeiten‚ Kompositionsstil zu suchen und weiter zu die ihm besonders am Herzen lagen, und so entwickeln. Im Jahr 1961, also dreiundzwanzig gewannen das Schreiben (sowohl Gedichte Jahre später, traf er eine ähnlich radikale als auch Prosa), die Malerei und das Zeichnen Entscheidung, allerdings aus einem anderen in seinem Leben schon bald an Bedeutung. Grund: Er verließ seine Frau und sein Zuhause und Immer aber blieben diese Tätigkeiten gab seine beruflichen Kontakte in London auf, zweitrangig gegenüber der Musik, und in um in Blythburgh in Suffolk mit der Komponistin seinen “Blythburgh-Jahren” entstanden die Doreen Carwithen (1922 – 2003), die er später (nicht mit den ersten vier zusammenhängende) heiratete, ein neues Leben zu beginnen. Zu Fünfte Sinfonie, die Sinfonietta für Streicher, dieser Zeit hatte er bereits seine Lehrtätigkeit ein Flötenkonzert, Liederzyklen und zwei an der Royal Academy of Music aufgegeben, Streichquartette. Vor allem aber konnte er seine einen Zyklus von vier anspruchsvollen schöpferischen Energien nun der Oper widmen. Sinfonien vollendet und erkannt, dass er keine In diesem Stadium seiner Laufbahn galt Filmmusiken mehr schreiben wollte; seine Alwyn als etablierter Filmkomponist und Laufbahn entwickelte sich mithin bereits in eine Sinfoniker – wohl in dieser Reihenfolge –, nicht andere Richtung. Mit seiner Umsiedlung an die aber als Komponist von Opern. Doch gerade die Küste von Suffolk vollzog er jedoch noch den Oper hatte ihn Zeit seines Lebens interessiert. zusätzlichen Schritt, seinem Künstlerdasein in Sein erstes opernhaftes Werk, The Fairy Fiddler, der Hauptstadt den Rücken zu kehren. hatte er in seiner Teenager-Zeit als Student Da Alwyn aber nicht die Absicht hegte, an der Royal Academy of Music geschrieben, auch das Komponieren aufzugeben, war später spielte er in verschiedenen britischen

22 Opernhäusern die Flöte, dirigierte Aufführungen und Klangeffekte kümmern), sondern Musik, die der Zauberflöte und die britische Premiere dazu dient, die dramatische Atmosphäre des von Rimski-Korsakows Mozart und Salieri und Films auszurichten – und damit dem bereits vollendete auf Bitten von Sir John Barbirolli die stattfindenden Angriff auf den Gesichtssinn Orchestrierung von Hugo Wolfs Der Corregidor. eine zusätzliche emotionale Ebene hinzufügt. Seine Erfahrungen als Filmkomponist waren Die Parallelen zur Komposition von allerdings wohl noch wesentlicher. Die Opern waren ihm durchaus bewusst, und kurzen Dokumentationen, mit denen er seine im Laufe der Arbeit an den Musiken für rund Kinokarriere begonnen hatte, waren, wie er zweihundert Filme hatte er eine Reihe von erinnerte, Theorien formuliert, wie man das Medium mit scheinbar unmöglichen Budgets gemacht Oper sowohl musikalisch als auch dramatisch worden, die all meine Erfindungsgabe und Kraft wiederbeleben könnte. Dabei kam er zu forderten, um den kleinstmöglichen Mitteln die folgenden Schlussfolgerungen: Die Handlung bestmögliche Musik zu entlocken. Dies bewog sollte ohne Bezugnahme auf eine detaillierte mich zum ersten Mal, innezuhalten und mir Synopse oder ein Programmheft unmittelbar darüber Gedanken machen, wie unabdingbar verständlich sein; Arien sollten einem eine solide Technik für die angemessene dramatischen Zweck dienen anstatt nur Umsetzung kreativer Ideen ist. der stimmlichen Zurschaustellung; um des Tatsächlich war es diese Erkenntnis, die ihn dramatischen Zusammenhangs willen sollten veranlasste, seine Konzertmusik zu kassieren die Figuren einander immer direkt ansingen und noch einmal neu zu beginnen. und nicht beiseite zum Publikum oder im Inzwischen hatte er entdeckt, dass Filmmusik Monolog; die Verwendung von Ensembles sollte mehr bewirken kann, als die Charaktere zu minimiert werden, um klangliche Klarheit zu etablieren, Stimmungen zu vermitteln und wahren; und vor allem sollte der Text so vertont die Atmosphäre zu vertiefen; gelegentlich werden, dass die Gesangslinien Rhythmus und gelang es ihr auch, die unausgesprochenen Tonfall der Sprache wiedergaben. Gedanken einer im Bild befindlichen Figur zu Einige dieser Gedanken waren vermitteln, selbst wenn diese nicht mit dem möglicherweise von den Schauspielen August übereinstimmten, was die jeweilige Figur visuell Strindbergs (1849 – 1912) angeregt worden, darstellte. “Filmmusik”, erklärte Alwyn, die Alwyn etwa zu der Zeit entdeckt hatte, ist vor allem dramatische Musik. Nicht als er Filmmusiken zu schreiben begann, beschreibende Musik (darum sollten sich Bild und die er schon bald für ideale Kandidaten

23 für die Art von opernhafter Umsetzung hielt, untermalt” wird; im Gegenteil, Musik sollte Wort für die er sich interessierte. Strindberg hatte und Tat gleichermaßen bedingen. Das Projekt das Konzept eines naturalistischen Dramas wurde daher fallengelassen – für weitere vorangetrieben, das Figuren aus Fleisch und zwanzig Jahre, bis Alwyn nach seinem Rückzug Blut präsentierte, deren psychische Schwächen nach Blythburgh endlich dem Drang nachgab, sie in lebensverändernde Konflikte führten – eine ausgewachsene Oper für die Bühne zu und dies muss Alwyn an die verismo-Opern komponieren. von Puccini und Mascagni erinnert haben, die Als erstes kam Juan, or The Libertine, das er besonders liebte. Doch die Notwendigkeit, auf James Elroy Fleckers Schauspiel Don Juan mit dem Unterrichten und Komponieren von sowie auf Baudelaire, Byron, Molière, Nietzsche Filmmusiken seinen Lebensunterhalt zu und Shaw basierte; sobald diese Oper 1971 verdienen – ganz zu schweigen von den durch vollendet war, wandte Alwyn sich wieder Miss den Zweiten Weltkrieg bedingten generellen Julie zu. Dieses Mal schrieb er sein eigenes Beschränkungen des Lebens – bedeutete, dass Libretto – er verdichtete Strindbergs Text, Alwyn sich erst zwanzig Jahre später ernsthaft ersetzte verbale durch musikalische Themen der musikalischen Umsetzung von Miss Julie und Motive und führte eine neue Figur ein, was zuwandte; davor hatte er zwei Sinfonien seines durchaus umstritten war. Ulrik, der Wildhüter, geplanten vierteiligen Zyklus vollendet und dient als Ersatz für Strindbergs Chor der eine Oper für den Rundfunk der BBC (Farewell Dorfbewohner, deren Mitwirkung in der Oper Companions) geschrieben. Alwyn als gekünstelt und unbeholfen ablehnte; Sein Freund Christopher Hassall lieferte ein zudem war er der Überzeugung, dass das Libretto, doch die Zusammenarbeit der beiden Fehlen eines Chors die klaustrophobische Enge, scheiterte daran, wie Alwyn schrieb, dass Hassall in der die zum Scheitern verdammte Beziehung eisern darauf bestand, sich eng an das originale der beiden Hauptfiguren stattfindet, noch Schauspiel zu halten, während ich ebenso verstärken würde. hartnäckig insistierte, auf alle unwesentlichen In seiner “naturalistischen” Phase war Details zu verzichten, auf Symbolik und Strindberg vom Darwinismus beeinflusst, und in Moralisiererei, und nur die dramatische dem Schauspiel erkundet er Evolutionstheorien Strindbergsche Substanz des Stücks zu aus der Perspektive von Gesellschaftsklasse bewahren. und Geschlecht. Miss Julie, eine Repräsentantin Eine Oper, behauptete er, sei nicht einfach nur ein des kompromisslosen Adels, sieht sich in einen Stück mit Handlung, die “gelegentlich von Musik Überlebenskampf gegen die aufstrebende

24 Klasse der Bediensteten verstrickt, die jede mit Musik von leidenschaftlich sinfonischer vom Leben gebotene Gelegenheit ergreift, Dynamik vorsah. Mit seinem Umzug nach ihre Verhältnisse zu verbessern. Zugleich Suffolk zog er sich zum Teil auch vor einem verkörpert sie Strindbergs Konzept der in seinen Augen feindseligen oder zumindest “modernen Frau”, die in ihrem Kampf um unsympathischen musikalischen Establishment Gleichberechtigung gegenüber dem Mann zum zurück, das das ihm eigene romantische Idiom Scheitern verurteilt ist. Das Stück könnte mithin als veraltet ablehnte und die Stigmatisierung für Alwyn, den unverhohlenen Romantiker, eine von “Filmkomponisten” nur selten hinterfragte; unerwartete Themenwahl darstellen, selbst da diese Vorurteile sich seit Alwyns Tod wenn man seine prima la musica-Haltung bei einigermaßen gelegt haben, können wir heute der Komposition von Opern berücksichtigt; sehen, dass die Qualitäten, die ihn auf dem doch er empfand das Schicksal von Miss Julie Gebiet der Filmmusik so erfolgreich sein ließen, als tragisch und war ihr während der drei Jahre, sich auch für das Opernfach ganz besonders in denen er an der Oper arbeitete, “hoffnungslos eignen. Wenn die Musik von Miss Julie verfallen”. einigen Hörern zu “cinematisch” klingt, Dass es ihm gelang, über die antiromantische liegt das sicherlich daran, dass Filmmusik Natur des Schauspiels hinauszugehen, lag an und Opernmusik Alwyns Meinung nach der Komplexität der Charaktere. “Es handelt vergleichbare dramatische Funktionen zu sich hier um eines der dramatischen Narrative”, erfüllen hatten. schrieb Rodney Milnes in dem Essay, das die Er meinte, die bei weitem wichtigste Lektion, erste Studioaufnahme der Oper begleitete, die er als Filmkomponist gelernt habe, sei der in denen die Worte selbst nur die Spitze des dramatische Einsatz von Musik im Verhältnis Eisbergs sind; in nahezu jedem Satz sprechen zum gesprochenen Wort; und in Miss Julie die Figuren nur etwa ein Viertel von dem aus, kamen Techniken zum Einsatz, die er im Laufe was sie meinen. vieler Jahre verfeinert hatte, in denen er Das Übrige ist zumeist Symbolik, und darin unzählige Drehbücher las und sich auf dem hatte Alwyn in seinen rund fünfundzwanzig Bildschirm gesprochene Dialoge anschaute. Die Jahren als Filmkomponist hinreichend Erfahrung offensichtlichsten sind das wiederkehrende gesammelt. Dreitonmotiv, das auf dem Rhythmus des Überraschender ist vielleicht, dass er ein Namens “Miss-Ju-lie” basiert, die insistierenden intimes, Kammerspiel-artiges Drama (für vier Ostinato-Figuren, die die Bedeutung besonders Solisten, ohne Chor und nur ein Bühnenbild) wichtiger Phrasen unterstreichen, und das

25 echohafte Aufgreifen (oder die Vorwegnahme) hört, aber deren implizierte Präsenz dennoch bestimmter Vokallinien, wodurch diese die Handlung beherrscht. zusätzliches Gewicht gewinnen, nachdem Alwyn war ein Meister der Orchestrierung, (oder bevor) sie gesungen werden. der Atmosphäre, des Timing und der Einige der Finessen des Werks sind rein Textvertonung; und nirgendwo wird dies musikalisch. Der Walzerrhythmus durchzieht deutlicher als in dieser zweiten seiner die ganze Oper und illustriert zunächst die “Blythburgh-Opern” (seiner letzten sorglose Erregtheit der Festlichkeiten zur Komposition für volles Orchester), die er Mittsommernacht, die sich anschließenden 1976 vollendete und die im folgenden Jahr harmonischen Verzerrungen verweisen für eine Studio-Produktion der BBC erstmals bereits auf das Ausmaß des Albtraums, den aufgeführt wurde. Allerdings kam es nur zu die Protagonisten sich selber schaffen. einer einzigen Bühneninszenierung – 1997 am Miss Julies emotionale Labilität wird von den Theatre Royal in Norwich unter der Leitung von hochliegenden Vokallinien suggeriert, die nur Benjamin Luxon, dem ersten Jean. “Eine Oper lose mit einem tonalen “Zentrum” verknüpft ist für die Bühne bestimmt”, schrieb Alwyn zur sind, während später ihr Trance-hafter Zeit der ersten Aufführung für die BBC, “und sie Zustand von Musik evoziert wird, die der der muss gutes Schauspiel ebenso bieten wie gute “Halluzinations-Szenen” ähnelt (oft mit Celesta Musik”; die Sicherheit seines Theaterinstinkts und Streicher-Tremolandi in ungefestigten wurde von der Reaktion des Publikums auf die tonalen Zusammenhängen), für die Alwyn als konzertante Aufführung des Werks im Oktober Filmkomponist berühmt war. Und vor allem 2019 in der Londoner Barbican Hall bestätigt, tauchen bestimmte musikalische Intervalle die der vorliegenden Aufnahme vorausging. Der und Akkorde immer wieder auf: Die Septime, Musikkritiker der Times fragte sich am folgenden die für Sehnsucht und unerfülltes Verlangen Morgen – “immer noch benommen” vom Eindruck steht, und der übermäßige Dreiklang, der Aufführung: dessen Dissonanz die unverminderte Warum ist dieses intensive, brillant Zwietracht zwischen allen vier Protagonisten orchestrierte und auf klaustrophobische Weise symbolisiert. Der übermäßige Dreiklang packende Meisterwerk seit seiner Premiere im wird am unverhülltesten in einer düsteren, Jahr 1977 derart vernachlässigt worden? glockenhaften Form verwendet, wann immer der Graf erwähnt wird – die maliziöse fünfte © 2020 Andrew Palmer Figur in der Oper, die man weder sieht noch Übersetzung: Stephanie Wollny

26 Synopse eigentlich Jean in die Scheune zurück zu locken Die Oper spielt Ende des neunzehnten hofft. Die erotische Spannung zwischen den Jahrhunderts in der Küche des Landsitzes beiden beginnt zu steigen und Julie weist eines verwitweten Grafen in Schweden; es ist Kristin an, sich für den Tanz umzukleiden. Dann Mittsommernacht. singt sie Jean ein verführerisches Lied über die Mittsommernacht und überredet ihn, nicht auf Erster Akt, Szene 1 Kristin zu warten. Die Angestellten und Bediensteten des Grafen feiern die Mittsommernacht mit einem Tanz Erster Akt, Szene 2 in einer nahegelegenen Scheune. Der Graf Mitternacht ist bereits vorbei, als Jean und verbringt die Nacht bei seiner Schwester, wohin Miss Julie aus der Scheune zurückkehren. Sie ihn sein Kammerdiener Jean gefahren hat; seine zieht ihn wegen seiner bäuerlichen Herkunft Tochter, Miss Julie, hat er zurückgelassen, auf, gleichzeitig aber macht sie ihm erotische damit sie das Haus hüte. Kristin, die Köchin, Avancen. Als er sie schließlich küsst, ist sie die heimlich mit Jean verlobt ist, wartet schockiert und gibt ihm eine Ohrfeige, zieht darauf, dass er sie zum Tanz ausführt. In sich aber nicht zurück. Voller verletztem Stolz der Zwischenzeit rührt sie den Inhalt eines beginnt Jean, die Stiefel des Grafen zu polieren, Kochtopfes auf dem Herd – ein Mittel für Miss aber sie weist ihn an, damit aufzuhören, und Julies Schoßhund; das Tier ist läufig und das kurz darauf fallen die beiden sich in die Arme. Mittel soll die Rüden fernhalten. Nun ist Ulrik zu hören, der sich der Küche Als Jean in die Küche zurückkehrt, ist er nähert; er ist betrunken und singt ein bereits in der Scheune gewesen und hat dort anspielungsreiches Lied über die beiden. Jean mit Miss Julie getanzt, die er in den Armen von hat gerade noch genug Zeit, Miss Julie in seiner Ulrik, dem Wildhüter vorgefunden hatte. Jean Schlafkammer zu verstecken, bevor Ulrik herein und Kristin sind beide der Meinung, dass Miss torkelt und verlangt, auch selber seinen Spaß Julie sich seit dem Freitod ihrer Mutter “völlig mit ihr zu haben. Alle wissen, dass sie sich in verrückt” gebärdet. Jean öffnet dreist eine Jean verliebt hat, verrät er, und sie “lachen sich Flasche Wein, die er dem Grafen gestohlen hat, darüber kaputt”. und beginnt, Kristin zu verführen. Als Ulrik gegangen ist, kommt Miss Julie Die beiden werden von der eintretenden wieder heraus; sie ist wütend, voller Scham und Miss Julie unterbrochen, die vorgibt, nach angsterfüllt vor der zu erwartenden Reaktion dem Mittel für ihren Hund zu schauen, aber des Grafen. Ihr bleibt nur, wegzulaufen, und

27 da erblickt Jean eine Gelegenheit, einen lang zweiten Arm hält sie den Hund, den Jean gehegten Plan in die Tat umzusetzen: Sie nun packt und an Ulrik weiterreicht, damit werden gemeinsam weggehen und in Lugano der ihn draußen entsorge. Ein Flintenschuss ein Hotel eröffnen. Vor Tagesanbruch sollten sie ist zu hören und Miss Julie bricht verzweifelt bereits unterwegs sein, denn dann kehrt der zusammen, während Jean und Kristin einander Graf zurück; in der Zwischenzeit kann sie die mit Vorwürfen überhäufen. Nacht mit ihm verbringen. Das unheilvolle Läuten der Küchenglocke kündet die Rückkehr des Grafen an. Miss Julie Zweiter Akt schaut hilflos zu, während Jean seine Uniform Der Tag bricht an und Jean kommt triumphierend anzuziehen beginnt. “Diese Glocke bestimmt aus seiner Schlafkammer. Miss Julie bereut mein Leben!”, erklärt er entschuldigend. Was bereits das Geschehene, ist aber gezwungen, ihr Hotel in Lugano betreffe, so sei dies nur ein seinem Plan zuzustimmen, der, wie sie erst Sommernachtstraum gewesen. Halb verrückt jetzt begreift, nur gelingen kann, wenn sie dem fragt Miss Julie ihn, was sie nun tun solle. Er Grafen Geld entwendet. Schließlich gehorcht rät ihr zu dem Ausweg, den schon ihre Mutter sie und geht nach oben. genommen habe – Selbstmord. Die Glocke Kristin kommt herein und bemerkt zwei läutet erneut und Jean schiebt Julie herzlos Gläser auf dem Tisch. Jean behauptet, er zur Seite, bevor er die Treppe emporsteigt. Sie habe mit Ulrik gebechert, doch sie glaubt nimmt seine Rasierklinge vom Tisch (in der ihm nicht und verkündet, sie werde dem Konzertaufführung, auf der diese Einspielung Skandal entgehen, indem sie kündigt und basiert, war das tödliche Mittel der von Kristin sich anschließend mit Jean vermählt. “Ich gebraute Trank), dann geht sie langsam und habe größere Pläne als das!”, spottet Jean. gefasst in den Park hinaus. Ulrik kehrt zurück, um sich für sein früheres © 2020 Andrew Palmer Verhalten zu entschuldigen, fängt aber bald an, Übersetzung: Stephanie Wollny mit Jean zu streiten. Miss Julie kommt nun wieder herunter, Sämtliche Auszüge aus Alwyns Schriften werden sie hat sich für die Reise angekleidet und hier mit Genehmigung der William Alwyn Foundation trägt in einer Hand einen Koffer. Unter dem wiedergegeben.

28 Andrew Palmer Benjamin HopeBenjamin

Rosie Aldridge Samuel Sakker Alwyn: Miss Julie

Alwyn et l’opéra cependant plus qu’une virgule: c’était le début N’étant pas satisfait de sa musique et d’un nouveau chapitre. Il avait désormais déterminé à découvrir et affiner un style le temps et la tranquilité nécessaires pour de composition de maturité, William Alwyn travailler à son rythme sur des projets “non (1905 – 1985) décida à l’âge de trente-deux commerciaux” qui lui tenaient à cœur, et ans de rompre avec son passé en retirant l’écriture (poésie et prose), la peinture et le toutes ses œuvres inédites. Vingt-trois ans dessin allaient bientôt prendre une nouvelle plus tard, en 1961, il fit quelque chose d’aussi signification dans sa vie. Toutes ces activités radical, mais pour une raison différente: il restèrent toutefois secondaires par rapport à quitta sa femme, son domicile, et abandonna la musique, et ses “années Blythburgh” virent ses contacts professionnels à Londres la composition de sa Cinquième Symphonie pour commencer une nouvelle existence à (sans rapport avec les quatre précédentes), de Blythburgh dans le Suffolk avec la compositrice la Sinfonietta pour cordes, d’un concerto pour Doreen Carwithen (1922 – 2003), qu’il épousa flûte, de plusieurs cycles de mélodies et de deux par la suite. Parvenu à cette date, il avait quatuors à cordes. Surtout, il put consacrer son démissionné de son poste de professeur à la énergie créatrice à l’opéra. Royal Academy of Music de Londres, terminé À ce stade de sa carrière, Alwyn était reconnu un cycle ambitieux de quatre symphonies, comme compositeur de musique de film et et pris conscience qu’il ne voulait plus écrire comme symphoniste – probablement dans cet de musique de film – ainsi sa carrière était ordre –, mais pas comme compositeur d’opéra. déjà en train de changer de direction. Mais en Et pourtant l’opéra l’intéressait depuis toujours. Il déménageant sur la côte du Suffolk, il prit la avait écrit son premier ouvrage lyrique, The Fairy décision supplémentaire d’abandonner la vie Fiddler, alors qu’il était étudiant adolescent à la artistique de la capitale. Royal Academy of Music; il avait ensuite tenu la Alwyn n’ayant aucune intention de renoncer partie de flûte dans des orchestres de théâtres à la composition, ce signe de ponctuation dans lyriques britanniques, dirigé des représentations sa carrière n’était pas un point final. C’était de Die Zauberflöte et la création au Royaume-

32 Uni de Mozart et Salieri de Rimski-Korsakov. Par et sonores devraient s’en occuper), mais une ailleurs, il avait terminé l’orchestration de musique dont la fonction est de mettre l’accent Der Corregidor d’Hugo Wolf à la demande de sur l’atmosphère dramatique du film – qui Sir John Barbirolli. Son expérience de ajoute un plan émotionnel supplémentaire à compositeur de musique de film était sans une attaque qui est déjà en cours sur le sens doute encore plus pertinente. Les courts visuel. documentaires avec lesquels il avait débuté Les parallèles avec la composition lyrique sa carrière cinématographique étaient, se ne lui échappaient pas, et tout du long de la souvient-il, composition d’environ deux cents partitions réalisés avec des budgets apparemment pour le cinéma, Alwyn avaient formulé des impossibles qui mirent à rude épreuve toute théories sur la manière de revitaliser le genre mon ingéniosité et mes ressources pour de l’opéra sur le plan musical comme sur le produire la meilleure musique possible avec les plan dramatique. Ses conclusions étaient plus petits moyens possibles. Pour la première que l’action devrait être explicite, sans fois, cela m’a vraiment fait arrêter et réfléchir à référence à un livret détaillé ou à une note de quel point la possession d’une technique sans programme; les arias devraient servir un but faille était essentielle à la bonne réalisation de dramatique plutôt que de fournir simplement mes idées créatrices. des démonstrations de virtuosité vocale; Et c’est cette prise de conscience qui le dans un souci de cohérence dramatique, les persuada de retirer ses œuvres destinées au personnage ne devraient chanter que les concert et de recommencer depuis le début. uns aux autres et non vers le public dans des Entretemps, il avait découvert que la apartés ou dans des soliloques; l’utilisation musique de film pouvait faire plus qu’établir des ensembles devrait être minimisée afin de une caractérisation, suggérer une humeur et maintenir la clarté auditive; et, plus important renforcer une atmosphère: dans certains cas elle encore, le texte devrait être mis en musique sur pouvait également communiquer les pensées des lignes vocales reproduisant les rythmes et non exprimées d’un personnage à l’écran même les inflexions de la parole. quand celles-ci étaient en contradiction avec ce Il est possible que certaines de ces idées qu’il montrait visuellement. La “musique de film”, lui furent suggérées par les pièces d’August explique Alwyn, Strindberg (1849 – 1912), qu’Alwyn avait est essentiellement une musique dramatique. découvertes à l’époque où il commença Pas une musique descriptive (les effets visuels à composer de la musique de film, et qu’il

33 considéra rapidement comme des sujets soulignée” par la musique; au contraire, idéaux pour le type d’adaptation lyrique qu’il la musique devrait conditionner à la fois voulait faire. Strindberg avait défendu une les paroles et l’action. Le projet fut donc conception de drame naturaliste mettant abandonné – pendant vingt années en scène des personnages de chair et de supplémentaires jusqu’au moment où Alwyn, sang dont les faiblesses psychologiques les installé dans sa semi-retraite à Blythburgh, conduisaient dans des conflits qui allaient céda à l’envie pressante de composer un opéra bouleverser leur vie, et celà dut rappeler à entier pour la scène. Alwyn les opéras véristes de Puccini et de Alwyn commença avec Juan, or The Libertine, Mascagni qu’il aimait. Mais la nécessité de basé sur la pièce de James Elroy Flecker gagner sa vie en enseignant et en composant Don Juan, ainsi que sur des textes de pour le cinéma, sans parler de l’interruption Beaudelaire, Byron, Molière, Nietzsche et générale de la vie provoquée par la Seconde Shaw, et aussitôt après l’avoir terminé, en Guerre mondiale, eut pour conséquence que 1971, il se tourna de nouveau vers Miss Julie. c’est seulement vingt ans plus tard, après avoir Cette fois, il décida d’écrire lui-même le livret. composé deux de son cycle prévu de quatre Il condensa le texte de Strindberg, remplaça symphonies et un opéra pour la BBC Radio le symbolisme verbal par des thèmes et (Farewell Companions), qu’il commença des motifs musicaux, et – de manière plus à travailler sérieusement à l’adaptation de controversée – il introduisit un nouveau Miss Julie. personnage. Ulrik, le garde-chasse, remplace le Son ami Christopher Hassall lui fournit un chœur des villageois de Strindberg, car Alwyn livret, mais leur collaboration échoua à cause estimait que sa présence dans l’opéra serait de ce qu’Alwyn décrivit comme étant artificielle, voire maladroite; il était également l’insistance [d’Hassall] de vouloir adhérer de convaincu que l’absence du chœur renforcerait manière inébranlable à la pièce originale et l’atmosphère claustrophobique et suffocante mon désir obstiné de me dispenser de tous dans laquelle se déroule la relation vouée à les détails superflus, du symbolisme et de l’échec des deux personnages principaux. la moralisation, pour ne conserver que la Au cours de sa période “naturaliste”, substance strindbergienne dramatique de Strindberg subit l’influence du darwinisme et la pièce. explora dans sa pièce les théories de l’évolution Un opéra, affirmait-il, n’est pas simplement à travers les prismes des classes sociales et une pièce dont l’action est “spasmodiquement des rapports entre les sexes. Miss Julie, une

34 représentante de l’aristocratie intransigeante pas de chœur, et seulement un décor) sur une et en voie de disparition, se trouve empêtrée musique dont le souffle est passionnément dans une bataille pour la survie contre la classe symphonique. Son installation dans le Suffolk ambitieuse des domestiques qui est prête avait été en partie un retrait par rapport à ce à s’adapter en saisissant les opportunités qu’il croyait être un establishment musical que lui offre la vie. Elle incarne également hostile ou du moins antipathique qui rejetait la conception de Strindberg de la “femme son romantisme comme dépassé et mettait moderne” vouée à l’échec dans sa lutte pour rarement en question la stigmatisation portée l’égalité avec les hommes. La pièce pourrait sur les “compositeurs de musique de film”. donc sembler un choix de sujet improbable Mais comme ces attitudes se sont adoucies pour Alwyn le romantique sans honte, même depuis sa mort, il est maintenant possible de en tenant compte de son approche prima la voir que les qualités qui lui ont apporté tant musica en ce qui concerne la composition d’un de succès dans sa musique pour le cinéma opéra. Et pourtant, il trouva tragique le sort de sont particulièrement bien adaptées à la Miss Julie, et tomba “désespérément amoureux composition d’un ouvrage lyrique. Si la partition d’elle” au cours des trois années pendant de Miss Julie semble trop “cinématographique” lesquelles il travailla à son opéra. à certains auditeurs, c’est sûrement parce La raison pour laquelle Alwyn fut capable de qu’Alwyn voulait que la musique de film et la voir au-delà du caractère anti-romantique de musique d’opéra remplissent des fonctions la pièce est la profondeur de ses personnages. dramatiques similaires. “C’est l’un de ces récits dramatiques”, écrit Alwyn dit un jour que la leçon de loin la Rodney Milnes dans l’essai accompagnant le plus importante qu’il avait apprise en tant que premier enregistrement en studio de l’opéra, compositeur pour le cinéma était l’utilisation où les mots eux-mêmes ne sont que le sommet dramatique de la musique en relation avec les de l’iceberg; dans presque toutes les phrases, paroles, et dans Miss Julie, il a déployé des les personnages n’expriment que le quart de ce techniques qu’il avait perfectionnées pendant qu’ils veulent dire. de nombreuses années à lire des scripts et Le reste est en majeure partie du symbolisme, à observer les dialogues parlés à l’écran. Les dont Alwyn avait vingt-cinq ans d’expérience plus évidents sont le motif récurrent de trois en tant que compositeur de musique de film. notes basé sur le rythme du nom “Miss- Plus surprenant, peut-être, est le fait qu’il Ju-lie”, les figures insistantes ostinato qui met en scèce un drame intime (quatre solistes, éclairent le sens des phrases particulièrement

35 importantes, et l’écho (ou le pré-écho) de Alwyn parvint à la maîtrise de l’orchestration, lignes vocales qui les renforce avant (ou après) de l’atmosphère, du timing et de la mise en qu’elles sont chantées. musique des paroles. Et cela n’est nulle part Certaines subtilités de la partition sont plus évident qu’ici, dans le second de ses deux purement musicales. Le rythme de la valse “opéras Blythburgh” (et sa dernière œuvre imprègne tout l’opéra et illustre au départ pour grand orchestre), qu’il termina en 1976, et l’excitation insouciante des festivités de la qui fut joué pour la première fois sous forme nuit du solstice d’été, mais les distorsions d’un enregistrement studio de la BBC l’année harmoniques qui suivent révèlent l’ampleur suivante. Pourtant, Miss Julie n’a reçu qu’une du cauchemar que les protagonistes se seule production scénique – mise en scène par créent eux-mêmes. L’instabilité émotionnelle Benjamin Luxon, le Jean de la création originale, de Miss Julie est suggérée par des lignes au Norwich Theatre Royal en 1997. “Un opéra est vocales aiguës qui sont seulement vaguement écrit pour le théâtre”, écrivait Alwyn à l’époque rattachées à un centre “tonal”, tandis que de l’exécution originale de la BBC, “et doit son état de quasi-transe final est évoqué par être du bon théâtre tout comme de la bonne une musique ressemblant à celle des “scènes musique”; et la sûreté de son instinct théâtral d’hallucination” (utilisant souvent le célesta fut confirmée par la réaction du public lors de la et les cordes tremolando dans des tonalités version donnée en concert au Barbican Hall de incertaines) pour laquelle Alwyn le compositeur Londres en octobre 2019 qui précéda le présent pour le cinéma était fameux. Et deux éléments enregistrement. Le lendemain matin, le critique musicaux particuliers apparaissent tout au du Times, “encore sous le choc” de l’expérience, long de la partition: l’intervalle de septième, qui se demandait: indique le désir ardent et le désir non assouvi; Pourquoi ce chef-d’œuvre intense, brillamment et la triade augmentée, dont la dissonance orchestré et d’une claustrophobie captivante symbolise le conflit non résolu entre les a-t-il été si négligé depuis sa première en 1977? quatre personnages. Ce dernier est utilisé © 2020 Andrew Palmer plus ouvertement sous une forme sinistre et Traduction: Francis Marchal semblable à la sonorité d’une cloche à presque toutes les mentions du comte – le cinquième personnage, malveillant, de l’opéra qui n’est ni Synopsis vu, ni entendu, mais dont la présence implicite L’action de l’opéra se situe dans la cuisine du domine l’action. château d’un comte veuf en Suède à la fin du

36 dix-neuvième siècle pendant le soir du solstice Acte I, Scène 2 d’été. Il est minuit passé quand Jean et Miss Julie reviennent du bal. Elle le nargue à propos de Acte I, Scène 1 ses origines paysannes tout en le provoquant Le personnel et les domestiques du comte sexuellement. Mais quand finalement il lui célèbrent le solstice d’été avec un bal donné donne un baiser, elle est choquée et le gifle, dans une grange proche du château. Le comte mais elle ne part pas. Blessé dans sa fierté, il passe la nuit chez sa sœur où il a été conduit commence à polir les bottes du comte, mais par Jean, son valet de chambre, et a laissé sa elle lui ordonne de s’arrêter, et ils tombent fille, Miss Julie, en charge du château. Kristin, la bientôt dans les bras l’un de l’autre. cuisinière, qui est fiancée officieusement à Jean, Ulrik, qui est ivre, s’approche de la cuisine attend qu’il l’emmène au bal. En attendant, elle en chantant une chanson pleine de sous- remue le contenu d’une casserole sur le poèle: entendus à leur sujet. Jean a juste le temps c’est une potion pour la petite chienne en chaleur d’aller cacher Miss Julie dans sa chambre avant de Miss Julie, qui éloignera les autres chiens. qu’Ulrik n’entre, et demande à prendre son Jean est de retour à la cuisine, mais il s’est plaisir avec elle. Tout le monde sait qu’elle est déjà rendu à la grange où il a dansé avec tombée amoureuse de Jean, lui dit-il, et ils en Miss Julie qu’il trouva dans les bras d’Ulrik, le font tous des gorges chaudes! garde-chasse. Jean et Kristin s’accordent pour Une fois Ulrik parti, Miss Julie sort de la dire que Miss Julie est devenue “complètement chambre en colère, honteuse et terrifiée par folle” depuis le suicide de sa mère. Jean ouvre la réaction du comte. Elle n’a pas d’autre choix effrontément une bouteille de vin qu’il a volé au que de s’enfuir, et Jean voit une opportunité comte, et commence à faire la cour à Kristin. de mettre en œuvre un plan longuement chéri: Ils sont interrompus par l’entrée de Miss Julie ils partiront ensemble, et ouvriront un hôtel à qui vient sous le prétexte de s’enquérir de la Lugano. Ils doivent partir au lever du jour avant potion, mais qui espère faire revenir Jean à la le retour du comte, et en attendant elle peut grange. La tension érotique entre eux commence passer la nuit avec lui. à augmenter, et elle ordonne à Kristin d’aller se changer pour aller au bal. Elle se met alors à Acte II chanter de manière séductrice à Jean à propos C’est l’aube, et Jean sort triomphant de sa de la nuit du solstice d’été et le persuade de ne chambre. Miss Julie regrette déjà ce qui s’est pas attendre Kristin. passé, mais se voyant forcée d’accepter son

37 plan, elle comprend maintenant que pour réussir, et Miss Julie observe impuissante Jean en elle doit aller voler de l’argent à son père. Elle finit train de mettre son uniforme. “Cette cloche par céder et monte à l’étage. gouverne ma vie!”, s’excuse-t-il. Quant à leur Kristin entre dans la cuisine et remarque hôtel à Lugano, ce n’était que le rêve d’une nuit que deux verres sont sur la table. Incrédule d’été. À moitié folle, elle lui demande ce qu’elle quand Jean lui explique que c’est avec Ulrik qu’il doit faire. Il lui suggère qu’il y a un moyen de buvait, elle annonce qu’elle évitera le scandale s’en sortir, celui qu’avait choisi sa mère: le en donnant sa démission, ensuite de quoi elle suicide. La cloche retentit de nouveau, et Jean se marira avec Jean. “J’ai plus d’ambition ce ça!” pousse froidement Miss Julie avant de monter ricanne-t-il. Ulrik revient pour s’excuser de la l’escalier. Elle prend alors le rasoir de Jean manière dont il s’est conduit précédemment, qui était posé sur la table (dans la version de mais bientôt il commence à se battre avec Jean. concert du présent enregistrement, l’agent Miss Julie redescend, habillée pour le mortel est la potion préparée par Kristin), voyage et tenant une valise à la main. De puis elle sort lentement et avec fermeté en l’autre, elle tient sa petite chienne que Jean direction du parc. lui arrache et donne à Ulrik pour qu’il aille s’en débarasser dehors. Un coup de feu retentit. © 2020 Andrew Palmer Miss Julie, bouleversée, s’effondre, tandis que Traduction: Francis Marchal Jean et Kristin se lancent des accusations. La sonnerie menaçante de la cloche de la Toutes les citations d’Alwyn sont reproduites ici avec cuisine indique que le comte est de retour, l’aimable autorisation de la William Alwyn Foundation.

38 William Alwyn,1978

Courtesy of The William Alwyn Foundation Andrew Palmer Andrew Palmer Miss Julie It is Midsummer Night, late in the evening but still light. The sound of dance music can be COMPACT DISC ONE faintly heard from the distant barn. Kristin is standing at the stove stirring a Act I saucepan. She is restless, expecting Jean. He Scene 1 enters from the servants’ hall. He is wearing a 1 [Orchestral Introduction] striped livery waistcoat and he carries a pair of riding boots with spurs which he puts down by Curtain rises. the table.

The kitchen of the Count’s country house Jean A large, old fashioned kitchen with a steep, 2 Miss Julie is crazy, narrow staircase leading up to the residential utterly crazy! quarters. At the foot of the stairs is the entrance to the servants’ hall and the maids’ Kristin bedrooms. The door to Jean’s bedroom is next Where have you been? to the entrance. Backstage, a large glass door stands open. To the right of the garden door Jean is a window with a snail mirror slung on the Crazy! She was leading the dance window latch. The kitchen sink stands below in the gamekeeper’s arms. the window. Through the door and window Utterly crazy! can be seen glimpses of the garden and an extensive park. Right stage is a tiled stove with Kristin a projecting hood, and next to it a tall kitchen So you’ve been to the barn, dresser stacked with china, glass, copper and I thought you were saucepans etc. The kitchen is furnished with taking the master. a large pinewood table and two chairs. On the table is a china ginger-jar filled with lilac. The Jean (unheeding) stove is decorated with tranches of birch twigs, The moment she saw me and the floor is strewn with juniper. Prominently she dropped her partner, placed on one of the walls is a large bell on an rushed over to meet me oiled spring. and asked me to dance.

42 Kristin (angrily) Then that bell rings again; So that’s where you were! and back up the stairs! ‘Your orders, my lord?’ Jean ‘It’s the coachman’s day off.’ And how she could dance! ‘Oh yes, my lord.’ Her waltzing’s divine! ‘You must drive me instead.’ (He starts to waltz round the kitchen, seizing ‘Where to, my lord?’ Kristin and waltzing her round the room.) ‘To my sister’s place.’ Tra-la, tra-la-la-la... ‘Very good, my lord; when you’re ready, my lord.’ Kristin (giggling) To hell with that bell! Let me be! Leave me alone! On Midsummer Night of all times! (He releases her and flings himself into a chair. Midsummer Night, She goes back to the stove and continues when everyone’s free stirring the saucepan. She then puts down the to do as they please! spoon and turns to him.) But I know my place, and a job’s a job. Kristin I took him all right. 3 But the Count... Kristin Jean It’s not all that far I took him all right. but you took a long time. A job’s a job; I know my place. Jean (He looks up at the bell.) On the way back When that bell rings I looked in at the barn. I’m up like a shot. I couldn’t resist it. ‘Yes, my lord, Music and dancing what are your orders?’ go to my head! (imitating the Count’s voice) And there was Miss Julie ‘Polish these boots.’ leading the dance. ‘As you please, my lord.’ Crazy, utterly crazy! And down I came.

43 Kristin Jean (casually) She’s always been crazy – What’s that you’re cooking? that’s nothing new. But since the Countess died – Kristin I promised Miss Julie. Jean It’s for her dog, Took poison, you mean – the poor little bitch – suicide. Jean Kristin (firmly) Watch your tongue! Since the Countess died A dog is a dog in this kitchen. she’s gone quite mad. Kristin Jean Miss Julie says ‘bitch’. Utterly crazy, crazy... Jean Kristin They can say what they like She shouldn’t be here alone. above stairs. But it’s not refined. Jean Neither is she, come to that, Crazy! out in the barn with that gamekeeper lout, Kristin all stinking of sweat! She ought to have gone with the Count. But how she could dance! Light as a feather, Jean and pretty. She hates the old man. What a figure, what arms and what breasts! Kristin I’m not surprised. Kristin (scandalised) Jean! Jean! (She busies herself at the stove.) Jean And how she can waltz!

44 Kristin (indignantly) Jean No better than me. Beer on Midsummer Night! Will you dance with me, Jean, I can do better than that. when I’ve finished this brew? (He opens the table drawer and produces a Jean bottle of wine.) Oh yes. Yes, if you like. Kristin That’s the Count’s special! Kristin Promise? Jean The master won’t miss it! Jean When I say a thing (He pours out a glassful and takes a long drink.) it’s as good as done. Kristin Kristin (mimicking him) You’re worse than a thief, When you say a thing but I have to admire you. it’s as good as done! You do what you want, and take what you want. (laughing) But when we are married – (He sits down at the table. He yawns and stretches.) Jean Married! Jean 4 By God, I’m thirsty! Kristin – you’ll have to behave, Kristin or I’ll know the reason why! I’ll get you a drink. Jean (She goes to the dresser to get a bottle of beer When we are married? and a glass.) Kristin You promised.

45 Jean Jean When I say a thing... Easy now! You know what I’m like Kristin when you get me excited! ...it’s as good as done! Kristin Jean I like a man that’s a man! It’s as good as done. Jean Kristin But everyone’s crazy tonight. So you say. Miss Julie’s crazy, But I’m not sure that I trust you. you’re crazy, All the same, I’m fond of you. and so am I! (She starts to stroke his hair affectionately.) You’re not like the others, (He pulls her onto his lap.) like the grooms or the coachman, or that Ulrik, the gamekeeper. Kristin You’re not like them. Behave yourself! Behave yourself! You’re quite the gentleman! Stop it! No wonder Miss Julie singles you out. But I’m not jealous. Jean You know your place. Why should I? Why should I? And a cook’s as good as a lady We’ve done it before. if it’s love you want! You’ve no secrets from me. (She puts her arms round his neck and fondles him.) (He starts to pull up her skirt, and she giggles How handsome you are – and struggles.) so handsome and so strong! Kristin Jean No, no, not now, Easy now! wait till later... No, Jean! Kristin Handsome and strong!

46 Jean Miss Julie Oh yes, oh yes! Good! How clever you are.

Miss Julie (off stage) (Jean strolls casually towards them.) 5 Kristin, Kristin, Kristin! Jean Kristin Are you talking secrets? Let me go, let me go! It’s Miss Julie. (Miss Julie moves towards him and waves him away with her handkerchief.) Jean Miss Julie! Miss Julie It’s no business of yours. (Kristin hastily tidies her dress. Jean hurriedly hides the bottle of wine in the drawer. Miss Julie (She lets the handkerchief slip from her hand. enters from the garden. She pretends not to Jean picks it up and smells it ostentatiously, notice Jean.) then hands it back with a flourish.)

Miss Julie (to Kristin) Jean Oh, there you are. What a beautiful scent! Is it ready? Can I take it with me? Miss Julie So you’re fond of scent Kristin as well as dancing? In a moment, Miss Julie. You certainly know how to dance. Where did you learn? (Kristin puts her fingers to her lips to remind Miss Julie of Jean’s presence.) Jean In Switzerland. Miss Julie (sotto voce) Do you think it will work? Miss Julie In Switzerland? Kristin (sotto voce) I’m sure of it. Jean It always works. At the best hotels.

47 Miss Julie Lugano, Geneva and Paris. Where you learned to speak French? (lamely) And now I’ve come home Jean to settle down Mais oui, Mademoiselle Julie. and get married.

Miss Julie (He shakes his head disbelievingly.) Vous êtes bien facile. You’re quite cosmopolitan. Miss Julie (ironically) Kristin’s a lucky girl Jean to marry a man 6 Well, I’ve travelled around of so many talents! from one job to another, What else did you learn Lausanne, London and Rome, on your travels? a waiter at one time or a gentleman’s gentleman, Jean (boldly) and now I’ve come home to settle down. How to deal with young ladies It was all good experience. and, and... I learned the way of the world, how to make love! (slyly) how to keep my end up, Miss Julie and how to attract girls! Tiens, Monsieur! Oh, I’ve travelled around Remember your place. and learnt a few things – (She turns her back on him and goes across to billiards and cards and such like – Kristin at the stove.) in my spare time. Kristin, is it ready?

Miss Julie (sarcastically) Kristin Billiards and cards, Nearly, Miss Julie. and dancing and French! (Kristin continues stirring the saucepan. Jean Jean shows great interest, and strolls casually Yes, I’ve travelled around across to them.) from city to city,

48 Miss Julie (coyly to Jean) Kristin (off stage) Go away, you’re not to peep! I shan’t be long.

Jean (Miss Julie and Jean look at each other in tense What have you got there? silence. Then, in the distance, the band can be Some witch’s brew for Midsummer Night heard.) to tell your fortune and choose you... a husband? Miss Julie 7 There’s a new dance starting. Miss Julie Come with me, Jean, Don’t be impertinent! come and dance with me.

Kristin Jean Behave yourself! But I said I would wait for Kristin. You know very well what it is: for Miss Julie’s bitch – I mean, dog – Miss Julie to keep the other dogs off. Kristin won’t mind.

Miss Julie (with a sidelong glance at Jean) Jean (hesitating) Just what I want... But I promised. Thank you, Kristin. Leave it to cool; Miss Julie I’ll come back for it later. Promised? You can go and get dressed now. You don’t want to miss all the fun. Jean (hesitating) I promised the next dance Kristin to Kristin. Thank you, my Lady. Miss Julie (Kristin takes the saucepan off the stove, then Kristin! Why Kristin? hurries to her bedroom.) You’ll have plenty of time to dance with her Jean (calling after her) when you’re married. I’ll wait for you. Come along, Jean, don’t waste time!

49 Jean Jean But people will talk. Very well. Just to please you, I’ll come.

Miss Julie (flaring up) (He slowly and deliberately takes his best jacket Talk! Why should they talk? from a peg under the stairs and starts to put it on.) Jean (with insolence) They might think Miss Julie you were favouring me. 8 You know why I came here tonight? If your Ladyship wants a partner try Ulrik again. Jean (intentionally obtuse) You seemed happy enough in his arms Yes, you came to fetch Kristin’s medicine. though he’s sweaty and smells; or the coachman, Miss Julie or one of the grooms, or – You’re very provoking! You know very well Miss Julie that was just an excuse... How dare you! I shall dance with whomever I like! Jean You are all of you servants, ...to come and fetch me? none of you fit to kiss my shoe! Yes, I know. You will do as you’re told But you’d no end of partners and dance with me. to choose from at the barn.

Jean (sulkily) Miss Julie (passionately) Whatever you say, my Lady. But none like you, Jean. An order’s an order. Ah! you dance so well; you take the lead. Miss Julie (with a change of mood – softly) You know how to master me. It’s not an order. And I need a master. (coaxingly) I need one badly. Come with me, Jean. I need you, Jean. Please, Jean.

50 Jean Miss Julie Do you really mean what you say? No servant –

Miss Julie Jean Come and see. No master – (She walks to the garden door and gazes out into the garden, then turns towards him.) Miss Julie 9 Midsummer Night, No maid – O, night of magic when the world can forget Jean its cares and sorrow, And no mistress. with no thought for tomorrow. A night for love Both and a night for gladness; And no one to say ‘No’ no servant, no master, on Midsummer Night. no maid and no mistress, and no one to say ‘No’ (Jean takes her arm, and together they go out to our heart’s desire. into the garden and vanish from sight. The stage (He goes slowly towards her.) is empty, then Kristin can be heard calling as Midsummer Night, she hurries in.) O, night of stars and silver moonlight, Kristin when the lilac is heavy with scent, 10 I’m ready, Jean! and the dew shines bright on the grass, (She is in her best party dress, with a shawl and the music is heady as wine – round her shoulders. She stops abruptly in and you can be mine, the vacant kitchen, then runs across to Jean’s and you can be mine! bedroom door.) Jean! Both (She flings the door open, but there is no sign of A night for love, him. She walks angrily back to the centre of the a night for laughter, stage, glances at the open garden door, flings no thought for tomorrow her shawl on a chair, and spits out one word:) or what may come after. Bitch!

Curtain

51 Scene 2 Jean (boldly) 11 [Orchestral Introduction] Shall I tell you?

The same, a few hours later (He gazes at her ardently.) The curtain rises on an empty stage. It is past midnight, and the kitchen is in darkness except Miss Julie (hastily) for the moonlight that floods in through the Why don’t you sit down? open door and window. Jean and Miss Julie enter from the garden. He tiptoes across to the Jean (ironically) entrance to the servants’ hall and the maids’ What! Sit down in your presence, rooms, and listens attentively. my Lady!

Jean (calling out softly) Miss Julie 12 Kristin, Kristin... Kristin! Supposing I order you to? (He goes across to Miss Julie.) She’s either asleep Jean or won’t answer. Then of course I’d obey. She’s angry because I went without her. Not that I care! Miss Julie Sit down then – Miss Julie (He starts to sit down.) A fine sort of wife she’d make you but first get me a drink. if she gets annoyed about nothing at all. (She sits down at the table.) Jean (hastily) So she’s gone to bed... There’s only beer. She’s as fat as butter, and she probably snores. Miss Julie (sweetly) I’ve simple tastes; Jean I prefer it to wine. No, she doesn’t. (Jean gets a bottle of beer and a glass from the Miss Julie (archly) dresser.) How do you know?

52 Jean Jean Allow me. We shouldn’t do this.

(He pours out a glass. There is a pause while he Miss Julie stands waiting for her to drink.) Why not?

Miss Julie Jean You forget your manners, Monsieur Jean! Supposing we were seen... A gentleman always drinks with a lady. Miss Julie (impatiently) Jean What of it? Je ne suis pas un gentilhomme. But all the same... Jean Tongues start wagging – (He fetches another bottle of beer.) it soon gets around.

Miss Julie Miss Julie Now drink my health. What do you mean? (He hesitates.) Don’t tell me you’re shy. Jean They were staring at us in the barn. (He raises his glass with mock gallantry.) You weren’t exactly discreet. And drinking alone here at night – Jean alone with a man! To my Lady’s health! Miss Julie Miss Julie Alone! Why, Kristin’s in there. Bravo! 13 Now you can kiss my hand. Jean (Jean gracefully and gallantly does as he is told.) But asleep. Well done! No wonder they call you ’Jean’!

53 Miss Julie Miss Julie Then I’ll go and wake her. What do I care what people think, (She gets up and starts to go towards Kristin’s least of all servants! room, then hesitates, undecided.) If I choose to step down – Perhaps you’re right. I should not be here. Jean (She goes towards the garden door and looks They’ll say you fell. out at the moonlight.) Let’s go out in the park. Miss Julie I love the moonlight. I don’t believe you. It’s so romantic! People are nicer than you think. Come with me, Jean. (She looks out at the moonlit garden.) (seductively) Jean And it’s Midsummer Night, 14 That wouldn’t do, either. if you want an excuse. (She challenges him with her eyes.) Miss Julie Come and see if I’m right – Why ever not? alone in the moonlight, You don’t imagine... out in the park.

Jean Jean No, not me, You’re crazy – utterly crazy! but others might think... Miss Julie Miss Julie (hysterically) Crazy? Everything’s crazy – That I’m falling in love life, humanity, love and laughter, with my father’s valet! scum on the surface of water till everything sinks Jean down, down, always down, It’s been known to happen. sinking, sinking, for ever sinking... It’s been known to happen! It’s a dream I have, always recurring. Do you ever dream like that? Ever like that? Do you? Oh, do you?

54 Jean Miss Julie 15 I have no time for dreams. Only a man? Besides, I don’t want to sink. A real man would kiss me! I want to rise and climb till I reach the top – Jean and never come down. Listen, Miss Julie, listen to me... Miss Julie (with growing passion) If you want to climb Miss Julie now is your chance! Kiss me, Jean! Come with me in the moonlight, wander with me in the park Jean while the air still echoes with music Listen... and the dew is fresh on the grass. Time is too precious for dreaming, Miss Julie our moment soon will be gone. First kiss me. Tonight is the night for our dreams to come true. Jean Oh, oh, come, Jean! All right – you’ve only yourself to blame. (She takes him by the arm and tries to draw him You’re playing with fire! towards the garden door.) How strong you are! (He goes to kiss her but she darts away.) And such strong arms! (She feels his muscles.) Miss Julie I do believe you’re trembling! How conceited you are! A real Don Juan. Jean (much moved) Take care, Miss Julie! Jean Don’t try me too far! Miss Julie (mockingly) Pourquoi, Jean? Miss Julie ...or Joseph! Jean Je ne suis qu’un homme. Jean Miss Julie!

55 Miss Julie Jean (sullenly, rubbing his cheek) Do you see me as Potiphar’s wife? Did you mean that?

Jean Miss Julie Miss Julie! Yes, I meant it.

Miss Julie Jean (bitterly) ...or Salome? 17 Playing with fire, but the game was too risky. Jean Well, a game’s a game, Miss Julie, for God’s sake! and I’ve had enough. (sarcastically) Miss Julie (mockingly seductive) If you don’t mind, 16 Would you like me to dance I’ve some work to do. and shed my seven veils ’til I’m naked before you? (He picks up the Count’s boots.)

Jean Miss Julie (angrily) You’re crazy! Put those boots down!

Miss Julie Jean Salome! That’s who I am – No! Salome! Salome! When the Count comes back and that bell rings, Jean he’ll expect them done. You’re crazy, you’re crazy! (He gets out polish and brushes from the dresser.) (He seizes her in his arms and kisses her on A job’s a job, the lips.) and it’s not my job to act playmate to you. Miss Julie No, no! (He starts to polish the boots.) (She breaks away, and slaps him on the face.) How dare you!

56 Miss Julie (He puts the boots carefully down, then looks You’re proud, aren’t you? straight at her.)

Jean Jean Perhaps. If you must know, it was you! (He continues to polish the boots whiles he roams aimlessly round the kitchen.) (Miss Julie is staggered. She sinks down on a chair.) Miss Julie Have you ever been in love? Miss Julie You’re mad! Jean You can’t mean it! What’s that to you? Jean Miss Julie It’s true, all the same. Tell me. I wouldn’t have told you; I meant to keep quiet. Jean But now... now... Hundreds of times. Miss Julie (impatiently) Miss Julie Yes, yes, go on! Really in love? Jean (with a sudden burst of resentment) Jean 18 You don’t know what it is No – except once. to be poor. Your world is above Miss Julie and you seldom look down. Who was she? But I gazed from below (He does not answer, but stops polishing the at the eagles soaring boots.) high over my head... Tell me who she was. And I saw you – a princess, a vision and I thought I could die for you.

57 Miss Julie Miss Julie I think I understand... No, I shall stay.

Jean Jean You can’t understand! Leave me! A dog may lie on a lady’s couch, a horse can be stroked by her hand; Miss Julie but a servant... No!

(He shrugs his shoulders and turns his back on Jean her. She gets to her feet and starts to fondle Leave me! him.) Miss Julie Miss Julie (tenderly) No, I shall stay. 19 But you can rise, Jean. You can climb... Jean A dog can be petted, Take my advice. a horse can be stroked, and a poor farm lad... Miss Julie Perhaps I can make your dreams come true. Jean (brusquely) I’ve said too much. Jean (passionately) I’m going to bed. Miss Julie, Miss Julie!

Miss Julie Miss Julie On Midsummer Night, Jean! on Midsummer Night... and leave me alone? (She kisses him as he takes her in his arms. At that moment a voice is heard in the distance. It (She puts her arms round his neck.) is the gamekeeper. The voice gets nearer.)

Jean (wavering) Ulrik (off stage, drunkenly) With a servant? 20 ‘A lady went a-roaming, Take my advice and go. All in the woods one day,

58 To look for rambling roses Ulrik To make a fine bouquet. Our darling mistress, But in the glade she met a lad Miss Julie! So handsome, tall and fair, With gun in hand and poaching bag, Jean He caught her in his snare. You’re drunk!

Jean (to Miss Julie in a hoarse whisper) Ulrik Quickly – into the bedroom! Not so drunk I didn’t see you both (Miss Julie starts to run towards Kristin’s room.) sneaking out of the barn. No, not that way! In here! (He takes a drink from a bottle of beer on the table.) (Jean hustles her into his own bedroom and shuts the door.) Jean Put that bottle down. Ulrik You’ve had too much already! ‘But roses lose their petals And a lady’s soon undone Ulrik If she makes her bed But you’ve had your fling... With a poaching lad And plays with a poacher’s gun.’ Jean (Ulrik comes in through the garden door.) What do you mean? (drunkenly) Where is she? Ulrik ...Mr High-and-Mighty Jean. Jean Who do you mean? Jean What are you talking about?

59 Ulrik Jean Next dance she has with me! Be careful what you’re saying! Come on, where is she? Don’t goad me too far! (He leers knowingly at the bedroom door as Jean Careful! Careful! blocks the way.) Mind what you’re saying. Where is she? That’s enough, that’s enough, (He lurches across the room.) you’ve said enough... I bet I know! (Jean grabs Ulrik and forces him back across Jean the room.) You drunken sot! The dance is over. Jean Everyone’s gone to bed. You filthy devil, get out! Get out! Go home, you fool! Miss Julie’s not here. Clear off, and get back Ulrik to your ferrets and stoats. Hard words can’t hurt. Ulrik Jean And leave her to creep in your bed? But blows can! You’re a sly one, Jean, but you can’t fool me! Ulrik (sentimentally) I want my little lady! (He picks up a bottle and waves it in the air.) What a girl she is, soft as a rabbit! Jean And can’t she dance! A joke’s a joke! Next time I shan’t be so careful; Don’t try me too far. I’ll hold her tight, Be careful, be careful! and tickle her waist, and maybe I’ll pinch her bum! (He dodges the bottle.)

Ulrik Here’s to our darling mistress!

60 (He takes a swig at the bottle.) Jean I don’t believe it. Jean Get out, or I’ll throw you out! Ulrik Miss Julie has fallen for Jean! (Ulrik starts to waltz round the room.) What a lesson you’ll teach her in French!

Ulrik (laughs) 21 She’s the queen of the dance (Jean grabs him and pushes him towards the and the talk of the barn. garden door.) Do you know what everyone’s saying? (He lurches at Jean and starts to paw him. Jean Jean tries to shake him off.) Get out, you devil, get out! When the Count’s away The Count shall hear of this! the cat will play! Ulrik Jean Aw – right, aw – right, I don’t believe you. no need to take on. (He lurches out into the garden, but stops and Ulrik turns back with a final gibe.) Cat and mouse with our Jean! Cat and mouse with our Jean! They are laughing their heads off! Jean Jean Get out! Get out! Laughing at me? (Ulrik turns and goes off, singing raucously.) Ulrik Cat and mouse! Ulrik ‘O roses lose their petals Jean And my lady’s soon undone Laughing at me? If she takes off her knickers For a poaching lad Ulrik And plays with his poaching gun.’ Cat and mouse!

61 (His song and drunken laughter die away to What can I do? nothing. All is silent. Then Jean goes to the What can I do? bedroom door.) Jean Jean You must go away. 22 You can come out now. (Miss Julie comes out of the bedroom. She is Miss Julie flushed with shame and anger.) But you? You heard what he said? Jean Miss Julie If the Count gets to know The drunken beast! I shall lose my job. So we’ll both have to go. Jean (He paces restlessly round the kitchen while And that dirty song Miss Julie watches him, mutely imploring him to about you and me... find a solution.) 23 I know, I know... Miss Julie (hesitatingly) The coward! You must come away with me. We’ll go together. Jean And all of them talking... Miss Julie But where? Miss Julie Behind my back! Jean (passionately) Abroad! To Switzerland. They’re all cowards, cowards! What shall I do? What shall I do? Miss Julie My father is bound to hear. To Switzerland! (hysterically) Oh God...! My father! Jean (gaining confidence) I couldn’t face that! And when we’re there I can’t stay here. we’ll start a hotel in Lugano. What can I do? It’s a plan I’ve always had.

62 Miss Julie (ecstatically) Jean In Lugano? And a deep blue lake. It will be wonderful. Jean You’ll love Lugano. Miss Julie But you must give me courage. Miss Julie Put your arms around me Is it beautiful? and say you love me.

Jean Jean It’s always summer, I love you – orange trees and a dark blue lake. you believe that, Miss Julie?

Miss Julie Miss Julie (tenderly) It sounds wonderful. ‘Miss Julie’ no longer. You can call me ‘Julie’. Jean We can start as soon as it’s daylight, Jean before anyone’s stirring; Julie? Julie... in Malmö for breakfast, No, no, and in three days’ time – 24 I can’t, not while we’re still in this house. Both Your father, the Count – Lugano! that bell will ring and I’ll lose my nerve. Miss Julie We must get away Where it’s always summer... before it is light.

Jean Miss Julie ...and the sun is always shining. But tonight?

Miss Julie Jean ...orange trees and a deep blue lake. You’ll be safe with me. It sounds wonderful!

63 Miss Julie (doubtfully) Jean (off stage) I could sleep with Kristin. Come, Miss Julie.

Jean (firmly) Miss Julie You can sleep with me. I’m coming, Jean.

(He indicates his bedroom.) (She goes slowly into the bedroom. Their shadows are seen outlined as they embrace. Miss Julie (hesitating) The door closes, and the curtain falls on a dark I’ll be safe with you...? and empty stage.)

Jean End of Act I I can promise you that.

Miss Julie COMPACT DISC TWO But that drunken beast may come back. Act II 1 [Orchestral Introduction] Jean I’ll bolt the door. Curtain rises. You have nothing to fear. The same, some hours later (He closes the garden door and bolts it.) It is early morning and the empty stage is lit by the red glow of the rising sun. Jean comes out Miss Julie of the bedroom, followed by Miss Julie. They are Nothing to fear – nothing, nothing... both half-dressed. He sees the Count’s boots I have no one left and gives them a vicious kick. except you. Jean (She watches him as if in a trance. He turns off 2 Never again! the light and enters his bedroom, leaving her in the faintly moonlit room. The bedroom light is Miss Julie turned on.) Why did you do that – what do you mean?

64 Jean The Count will return in an hour or so, Never again polish his boots and we must be off before then. and bow and scrape! Now, as to our plan...

Miss Julie Miss Julie Not ever again, never again. What plan? Tell me you still love me. Jean Jean The hotel in Lugano. Yes, of course. Miss Julie Miss Julie But to start a hotel Say you mean it. one needs a lot of money. Nothing can be the same after tonight. Jean That’s where you come in. Jean (impatiently) No time for sentiment now. Miss Julie It’s getting light What do you mean? and there’s much to be done. I’ve none of my own – (He sits down at the table.) only enough to pay for our fares. Sit down there and listen to me, Jean and don’t interrupt. You’ve no money? Neither have I, no money – Miss Julie (slowly sitting down) so we’re back where we started. How cold you sound! And only a moment ago Miss Julie you were kissing me! But I must go away. I can’t remain here – Jean as your lover, your mistress – We’ve other things and everyone talking to think of now. behind my back and pointing at me.

65 I couldn’t bear it. Jean I couldn’t bear it! You must take me as I am. (hysterically) Don’t come the lady with me! You’ve got to take me away – (She sobs hysterically.) away from the scandal, (relenting a little) away from the scandal! 3 Now don’t lose your head. Sooner or later it’s bound to come out; I’m not quite as bad as you think. sooner or later my father will know. (He takes the bottle of wine from the table My father...! drawer.) (She suddenly realises the enormity of her Have a drink of this, position.) and you’ll feel far better. Oh God, what have I done? Oh God, oh God... Miss Julie (aghast) That’s my father’s wine! (She bursts into tears.) Jean Jean (callously) Straight from the cellar! What have you done? No more than plenty of other girls. Miss Julie You stole it! Miss Julie (hysterically) I’m not just one of your sluts! Jean I’m not like other girls. Of course, why not? Oh God, oh God! What devil made me think (She jumps up indignantly.) you loved me? Miss Julie Jean You’re a thief! Thief! Thief! Love’s no use without the money. To think that I’ve thrown in my lot with a thief! Miss Julie I must have been mad! Oh, you’re sordid and horrible! (Pacing up and down.) Oh God, what shall I do? And you said you’d die for me – for a princess, a vision...!

66 Jean Hit me, hit me! I made that all up. (She sinks to the ground and cowers at his You wanted romance feet.) and you got it! (sobbing) Oh, Jean, how could you? Miss Julie You brute, you brute, (He hesitates, then lowers his fist.) to trade on my feelings! You’re heartless, you’re heartless! Jean You led me on. No – I can’t – I can’t hit a man when he’s down. Jean (scoffing) I’m sorry. Led you on? I shouldn’t have said what I did. You were quick enough I don’t like to see you like this – to let down your drawers at my feet. when it suited your fancy! You, a lady! You, so proud!

Miss Julie Miss Julie (sobbing and half to herself, as if in How dare you, how dare you! a dream) Get up when you’re spoken to! 4 Scum on the surface of water – You’re still a servant – sinking, sinking, down, down, with the vulgar mind always down. of a servant! But I love you – I love you still.

Jean (in a storm of anger) Jean Get out of here. Love! You were swept off your feet Get out, get out of here! for a game on Midsummer Night! I’m not your servant! Miss Julie (He goes to strike her.) No, no! I love you, I love you. Miss Julie That’s right – hit me! It’s all I deserve!

67 Jean Miss Julie Do you mean what you say? Does it matter, does it matter? You certainly meant it in bed when you lay in my arms, Jean naked and mad with desire. It’s vulgar to get drunk. How lovely you were! (He stoops down and helps her to her feet, and Miss Julie (thoughtfully) puts his arm round her.) My mother got drunk... How lovely you are! My mother got drunk, Do you mean what you say? but she wasn’t vulgar. Do you love me still? She kept it so secret that nobody guessed. Miss Julie (passionately) But how she suffered! I do, I do! So good and so kind. She wasn’t pretty, Jean but I thought her lovely, so lovely. Then give me a kiss! Jean (He tries to kiss her, but she thrusts him aside.) A real lady!

Miss Julie Miss Julie Not here, not here! She wasn’t a lady – 5 If you want me again I mean the nobility. you must take me away. Her grandfather died We still have time and left her a fortune. to catch our train. My father, the Count, But I need a drink married beneath him, to give me strength. married for money. It’s all so sordid; (He pours out a glass of wine. She empties it at why should I tell you? a gulp and holds it out to be re-filled.) He took it all from her then treated her like dirt. Jean It’ll go to your head.

68 Jean Jean So that is why... I don’t want to die. Better to start a hotel. Miss Julie (quietly) Yes – she took poison. Miss Julie (eagerly) At Lugano, Jean where the sun is always shining Suicide! and the oranges hang on the trees and the water is always blue... Miss Julie I’ll never forgive him. Jean (mocking) Never, never! And it’s crowded with tourists – I hate him! good for hotels! I hate all men! 6 If I only had enough money... We must have the money. Jean Do you hate me, too? Miss Julie You said you loved me. Money? Money? But how can we get it? Miss Julie I hate you, too! Jean I’d shoot you like a dog! From the Count! He robbed your mother; Jean (laughing at her) now you can get your own back. But you haven’t got a gun, It’s our only chance. so what can you do? Miss Julie Miss Julie (distraught) No, I can’t do that! I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m not a thief. Oh, take me away, Jean, just a few days, or a week – Jean as long as we can Remember your mother! with the money we have – and then we can die...

69 Miss Julie We’ve got to have it. No, no, I can’t do it. The Count keeps the keys of his safe in the drawer by his bed. Jean Get dressed and pack a few clothes, Then the deal is off, then come back here. and I stay here. Miss Julie (abjectly) Miss Julie Come with me, then. Oh, you’re as hard as stone! Come with me, come with me. Talk to me kindly. Help me, tell me what to do. Jean I’ve been a fool – What! Go above stairs? out of my mind. You must be crazy! But isn’t there some way out? I can’t go upstairs There must be some way out. unless the Count rings. Now! Do as you’re told Jean and be quick about it. Yes, yes, with the money! (She slowly starts to climb the stairs, then stops Miss Julie (hysterically) and turns to him.) I can’t, I can’t. Miss Julie (sadly) Jean 7 You sound so cruel, Jean. You must! Speak to me gently. You hate the Count... Jean Miss Julie An order always sounds cruel. I can’t, I can’t... Now you know what it feels like!

Jean (She turns away and wearily mounts the stairs. Don’t say you can’t. Jean stands watching her until she disappears You’ve lost your nerve. from sight, then he gives a sigh of relief.) Just do as I tell you. Go upstairs. Go upstairs for the money.

70 8 [Orchestral Interlude] Kristin Lies, lies! You were always a liar. (Jean, with a triumphant grin, walks briskly to Miss Julie was here. the kitchen dresser. Kristin appears at the door I know when you’re lying. of her bedroom, half-dressed. Ignoring Jean, she pretends to busy herself, but at last curiosity Jean gets the better of her. She turns to him.) It was Ulrik, I tell you. But believe what you like – Kristin It don’t matter to me. 9 Has she gone? (He turns his back on her and goes to the sink.) Give me my razor. Jean It’s time I got shaved. Who – who do you mean? Kristin Kristin 10 Whatever you say, I know You know very well who I mean. you were here with the mistress. (She goes over to the table and points to the A woman always knows dirty glasses.) when another’s concerned. And you’ve been drinking together! (Jean is sulkily silent.) How could you fall so low, Jean behaving like that? Yes, we did have a drink together, me and Ulrik. How could you? Look me in the face if you can. Kristin (shrilly) (He maintains a sulky silence and continues Ulrik? I don’t believe you. shaving with exaggerated care.) You know you can’t stand him, Look me in the face if you can! and you told me yourself Miss Julie! he was still at the barn. I’d never have thought it, that I wouldn’t! Jean (sulkily) Miss Julie, of all people! All the same, it was Ulrik. Jean (goaded out of his silence) Nag, nag! Nag, nag! You’re just being jealous.

71 Kristin I’m not staying here, Jealous! not in a house where there’s no respect for your betters. Jean Just because I went dancing – Jean Betters? Kristin (scornfully) They’re no better than us. Dancing! Dancing! I can prove it. A pretty dance you led her! (He has finished shaving. He cleans his razor Jean but, distracted by Kristin’s tirade, he moves from Jealous, that’s what you are! the sink towards her, the razor still in his hand.)

Kristin Kristin Jealous! No better than us! You don’t know what you’re saying. Jean 11 Class is class, and don’t you forget it. That’s what you are – jealous! Class is class, and the gentry the gentry. Jealous! There’s some to give orders and some to obey. Kristin (sanctimoniously) Jealous of her? No! No! God made me a cook, If it had been Clara and a cook I’ll stay. or one of the chambermaids, Poor Miss Julie! Poor Miss Julie! I’d have scratched your eyes out. To think she’d fall But here with the mistress... to a man like you! It was wicked – Jean downright wicked! What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with that? Jean Don’t blame me. Kristin She led me on. Wrong? It was downright wicked! (hastily) I’m not staying here another day – At the dance, I mean, at the dance.

72 Kristin Jean Well, I’m not staying here, Married to you? whatever you say. I’ve got more ambition than that! I shall hand in my notice. (He puts on his stiff collar, then automatically Jean comes over to Kristin for her to tie his bow And then? tie. Ulrik, in his outdoor gamekeeper’s rig, with his game-bag over his shoulder, and his gun Kristin tucked under his arm, lounges into the kitchen I’m not staying here. unobserved by Jean and Kristin.)

Jean Kristin (adjusting Jean’s tie) And then – and then? You can keep your ambition. We’ll see about that. Kristin You’ve your duty to do, I shall hand in my notice. and don’t you forget it.

Jean Jean And then – and then? I know what’s my duty without you nagging, Kristin nagging, nagging! 12 We’ll get married. Kristin (He stares at her, and puts the razor down on Don’t forget it! the table.) Don’t forget it!

Jean (Jean smirks with satisfaction at his reflection in Get married? the mirror, while Kristin surveys her handiwork.)

Kristin Ulrik (sarcastically) Yes, as you promised. 13 A pretty domestic scene! Sweet as a couple of love-birds!

73 Jean (sarcastically) Kristin (triumphantly) You’ve got a nerve, 14 I knew I was right! after last night! She was here all the time – Miss Julie, Miss Julie! Ulrik (complacently) Your mistress. I admit I wasn’t quite sober. Ulrik Jean Miss Julie, Sober! You were drunk as a lord! our charming mistress! Blundering in here... Or should I say Jean’s!

Ulrik Jean (furiously) Everyone drinks on Midsummer Night. Keep your mouth shut, So calm down, old man. or I’ll – I came with the best of intentions. Ulrik Jean Or you’ll what? Damn you! Be quiet, be quiet! You’d better keep quiet, or I’ll spread it about Ulrik (maliciously ignoring him) that Jean spent the night with Miss Julie! The dance was barely half over when I found I had run out Kristin of partners. I told you so! When you’ve sampled the best News gets around. no other will do. How can I bear it – So I came here all the girls laughing! to see what I could find. Jean Kristin (incredulously) Don’t think of yourself, You were looking for me? think of me. That’d be quite a change! Ulrik Well, not exactly. Let’s say a certain lady.

74 Jean Jean Stop it, for God’s sake! Get out, clear off! Keep your mouth shut! Get out, get out! Stop it, for God’s sake! Get out, get out! Stop it, for God’s sake! I’ll kill you for that! Stop it! Stop it! Get out! Clear off! Get out! Clear off Ulrik or I’ll throw you out. Steady now, steady! No harm meant, Ulrik no harm meant! Steady now, steady! Steady now! Miss Julie, the darling! (Kristin, who has been watching the men with What a plum to fall in your arms! grim satisfaction, suddenly looks up at the Some men have all the luck. stairs. She has heard a noise up above.) Some men have all the luck! Kristin Kristin Stop it! Stop it! What shall I do? What shall I do? Be quiet! You’re nothing but brutes! 15 There’s someone upstairs – Taking advantage. Poor Miss Julie! I heard someone moving. Poor Miss Julie! You’re nothing but brutes. Jean (hastily) Brutes! Brutes! Brutes! It’s only Clara – drawing the curtains. Brutes – you’re nothing but brutes! Kristin (Jean grapples with Ulrik and tries to hustle him Clara? It can’t be. out through the door.) She’s still asleep. That girl’s bone lazy. Ulrik (laughing) Do you think it’s the Count Steady now, steady! come home already? Steady, steady! (mockingly) Jean (briskly) Oh, what a plum, If it is, he’ll be ringing. so ripe and juicy! You’d better buck up Our darling Miss Julie! and get dressed.

75 Kristin (as she leaves) Jean God help us! What a morning! Have you got the money?

Jean (to Ulrik) Miss Julie Now you clear off! Yes, enough for a start. You’ve done enough damage already. Clear off, and leave me alone. (She puts her suitcase down.)

Ulrik Jean I’m sorry, I’m sorry, old man. Good girl! I knew you’d have the spirit It was only a lark. when it came to the point.

Jean Miss Julie Only a lark! But why aren’t you dressed?

(Ulrik starts to leave.) Jean Kristin’s awake and – Ulrik Well, I must get on my way. Miss Julie I’ve my rounds to do, Kristin? Does she suspect? and a shot at a rabbit will do me good! Jean (Ulrik is already at the garden door when Miss No, not a thing. Julie appears at the top of the stairs. She is But we must be off dressed for travel, with a suitcase in one hand before she comes back. and her pet lap-dog under her arm. She does My bag’s in the bedroom. not see Ulrik, who has stopped at the garden door and who now watches, a sardonic smile (Jean turns to hurry off, but stops as he sees on his face.) Ulrik. Miss Julie sees him at the same moment. Ulrik saunters into the kitchen.) Miss Julie (slowly) 16 I’m ready now, Jean. Ulrik (insolently) Everything’s packed. So you’re going to leave us; I’ve got all I need. run off with our Jean. Well, I don’t think much of your taste.

76 (Miss Julie stares at him, wide-eyed with horror.) Jean (roughly) You’re off your head! Jean (furiously) We can’t take a blasted dog around. Damn you! Clear off, Give it to me. and leave us alone! Miss Julie Ulrik (ignoring Jean and sidling up to Miss Julie) No, no! Don’t be so cruel. And where would you be going? I must take her with me. And wouldn’t the Count like to know! Jean Miss Julie (hysterically) Give it to me, give it to me! He mustn’t know, he mustn’t know! Oh, my God! Ulrik Steady now, steady! Ulrik (wheedling) That’s all right, little missy. Miss Julie I shan’t give you away, I shan’t give you away. I can’t leave her here You can go to the devil with no one to love her. for all I care! I’d rather you killed her! But first, put your dog down Jean (brutally) and give me a kiss! Right! Then give her to me.

(He tries to kiss her, but Jean grabs him and Ulrik pulls him away and turns furiously on Miss Steady now, steady! Julie.) Miss Julie Jean (pointing to the dog) I can’t, I won’t, I won’t! 17 What the devil is that? What’s that dog doing here? Jean But I can, and I will! Miss Julie (fondling the dog) (He grabs the dog and hands it to Ulrik.) My darling own pet, Here – take this. I can’t leave you behind.

77 Take this vermin away (A gunshot is heard off stage as Ulrik shoots and shoot it! the dog.) Or wring its neck! 18 He’s killed her, killed her! (Kristin hurries in.) Miss Julie Kristin, Kristin! No, no! No, no! Help me, help me!

(She tries to stop Ulrik, but Jean seizes her and (She sobs hysterically on Kristin’s shoulder.) puts his hand over her mouth to gag her.) Kristin (coldly) Ulrik (maliciously) What’s all this mean – My kind of job! shouting and screaming? That’s what I’m paid for. A pretty sight, I must say! (He dangles the dog in front of Miss Julie’s face, Jean, what have you been up to? then stuffs it into his gamekeeper’s bag, winks at Jean and walks briskly to the door, where he Miss Julie (half whispering) stops and turns.) Kristin, Kristin, listen to me. Goodbye and good luck! I’ll tell you everything. I can’t wait to see the Count’s face when he knows! Jean (roughly) Don’t listen to her. (Ulrik goes out. Miss Julie breaks loose from She’s off her head! Jean’s grasp.) Miss Julie Miss Julie (screaming) Listen, Kristin, you must – Ulrik, Ulrik, come back, come back! and you will understand. (She tries to run after him, but Jean holds her back.) (Kristin pushes her away.) (to Jean) Kill me! Kill me! Kill me too! Kristin I hate you, I hate you! You’re dressed for a journey I wish to God I’d never seen you! and packed your bag. I wish I’d never been born!

78 Where are you off to? Kristin (derisively) (to Jean) Start a hotel! But isn’t the master back? You’re mad, you’re crazy!

Jean Miss Julie (eagerly) Not yet, not yet – a false alarm. But you can come too, Kristin, and take over the kitchen. Miss Julie (imploringly) That would be lovely. Listen, Kristin, listen... Oh, say you’ll come, and we’ll all be happy. Kristin Oh, say you’ll come, dear Kristin! I don’t want to hear. If you’re going away, (She throws her arms round Kristin and starts that’s the best thing for you; to fondle her.) but if you think you’re taking my Jean I’ll soon put paid to that. Kristin (coldly) You’re mad! You’re mad! Miss Julie (wringing her hands) Oh, what shall I do? Miss Julie (urgently) You’re a woman, Kristin, You’ve not been abroad. you are my friend. It’s fun going by train – You must try to help me. to Switzerland, I can’t stay here, to Lugano! neither can Jean. It’s always summer there We must go abroad. and the lake’s as blue as heaven, and the oranges are balls of fire Kristin in Lugano, in Lugano! 19 You’re mad! We’ll start a hotel – You’re both mad! Jean’s hotel. Is it true, Jean? I shall be hostess, and you head cook Jean (sulkily) with lots of servants. We’ve got enough money to start a hotel.

79 And we’ll all grow rich, Jean and take a house on the lake; I wouldn’t say that. and the sun will always shine – But it’s a good scheme not often, of course... and it might work. Sometimes it will rain, and then, and then – Kristin we’ll come home – Now listen to me! again... If you think I’m going to work for that bitch – (Kristin has listened to her in stony silence.) Jean Kristin Watch your tongue Do you really believe that? when you speak of your mistress.

Miss Julie (utterly crushed) Kristin Do I... believe... all that? Mistress indeed!

Kristin Jean Yes, all that rigmarole! Yes, your mistress.

Miss Julie Kristin I don’t know... Well, well! I don’t believe anything Listen to him! any longer... (She sinks down dejectedly on the chair by the Jean table.) Yes, listen to me for a change! ...nothing, nothing at all... Miss Julie’s your mistress. Who are you to turn up your nose! (Her voice trails off in utter despondency.) Kristin Kristin (to Jean) She behaved like a slut, 20 Well, well! a common slut! So you’re going to elope!

80 Jean Jean Be careful! Keep your foul mouth shut, or I’ll – Kristin I know my station, (He picks up the razor and waves it if she doesn’t. threateningly.)

Jean Kristin Your station! Thief, thief! You wouldn’t dare! Kristin Thief, thief! Thief, thief! I’ve never messed around with the stable lads – Jean Shut up, you devil, Jean or I’ll cut out your tongue! No, you hooked yourself to a nice steady chap – (Suddenly the bell rings with a harsh, jangling clamour. Miss Julie leaps to her feet. Jean and Kristin Kristin look up at the vibrating bell on the wall So steady you steal the Count’s wine! as though mesmerised. Jean drops the razor on Yes, steal! the table.)

(Miss Julie puts her hands over her ears in Jean horror at this sordid squabble.) 21 The Count’s back!

Jean Kristin Steal! Who takes a cut It’s the master! off the grocery bills and bribes from the butcher? Miss Julie From the butcher, from the butcher! My father! Oh God!

Kristin (furious) Jean You thief! You’ve got no shame! He’ll be wanting his boots. First steal from the Count, then steal your mistress!

81 Kristin Jean He’ll be wanting his breakfast. Just a dream – a dream on Midsummer Night. Miss Julie I was mad then – Jean! What shall I do? What shall I do? we were both of us mad.

Kristin Miss Julie Where’s that Clara, But the money – the money? the lazy slut? Jean (carelessly) (She runs off to rouse Clara.) Put it back, put it back.

Miss Julie Miss Julie Kristin! Kristin! Don’t leave me! I can’t, I can’t! (She turns to Jean in despair, but he is putting Why did I take it? on his valet’s striped waistcoat.) I must have been mad. Jean, what are you doing? You are right – I was dreaming. We can’t stay here – we can’t, we can’t! And now I feel so tired, so tired – so tired... Jean Help me now, Jean. 22 You can go, but I can’t. Order me, order me and I’ll obey you. It’s that bell – it saps my strength. Do one last thing for me: It rings and rings till I’ve answered its call. save my honour, save my name. I’m sorry, Miss Julie, truly I am. You must know what I ought to do. You can call me a coward, Then tell me, tell me. but I can’t help it. I’ll do what you say. That bell rules my life! (Jean puts down the boots. He glances at the razor on the table near where she is standing, (He picks up the Count’s boots and then looks her in the face, but she appears automatically begins to give them a final polish.) mesmerised.) I’m so tired, so tired. Miss Julie 23 I must be dreaming – But our hotel in Switzerland – everything is hazy. in Lugano? I only see your face...

82 And your eyes are glowing Jean (coldly) like coals in the fire! Je vous en prie, mademoiselle. A fire that’s dying, dying – all blurred and white like ashes. (She watches him as he goes up the stairs. (The morning sunlight streams into the room, When he has gone, she turns and picks up the illuminating Jean. She rubs her hands together razor from the table. Then, slowly, with a firm as if warming them by a fireside.) step, she walks out, as if in a trance, through It’s so warm and lovely, the garden door into the park. The curtain falls so light and so peaceful! on an empty stage.)

Jean (slowly and quietly) End of the Opera There’s one thing you can do. William Alwyn There’s one way out for both of us: Libretto reproduced by kind permission of the way your mother took. The William Alwyn Foundation (He looks significantly at the razor on the table.) (Miss Julie looks at the razor.) Not here, but out in the park.

Miss Julie (with touching gratitude) Oh, thank you, thank you! Now I’ll find peace at last. (The bell rings a second time. Jean picks up the Count’s boots and begins to walk, like a robot, towards the stairs. She bars his way.) 24 Kiss me... before I go! Just one last kiss!

(He brushes her aside.)

83 Andrew Palmer Andrew Palmer Andrew Palmer Andrew Palmer Also available

Smyth Mass in D • Overture to The Wreckers CHSA 5240

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Chandos 24-bit / 96 kHz recording The Chandos policy of being at the forefront of technology is now further advanced by the use of 24-bit / 96 kHz recording. In order to reproduce the original waveform as closely as possible we use 24-bit, as it has a dynamic range that is up to 48 dB greater and up to 256 times the resolution of standard 16-bit recordings. Recording at the 44.1 kHz sample rate, the highest frequencies generated will be around 22 kHz. That is 2 kHz higher than can be heard by the typical human with excellent hearing. However, we use the 96 kHz sample rate, which will translate into the potentially highest frequency of 48 kHz. The theory is that, even though we do not hear it, audio energy exists, and it has an effect on the lower frequencies which we do hear, the higher sample rate thereby reproducing a better sound.

A Hybrid SA-CD is made up of two separate layers, one carries the normal CD information and the other carries the SA-CD information. This hybrid SA-CD can be played on standard CD players, but will only play normal stereo. It can also be played on an SA-CD player reproducing the stereo or multi-channel DSD layer as appropriate.

Microphones Thuresson: CM 402 (main sound) Schoeps: MK22 / MK4 / MK6 DPA: 4006 / 4011 Neumann: U89 CM 402 microphones are hand built by the designer, Jörgen Thuresson, in Sweden.

89 Acknowledgement Chandos Records would like to thank The William Alwyn Foundation for its generous support of this recording project.

The BBC word mark and logo are trade marks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and used under licence. BBC Logo © 2011

Recording producer Brian Pidgeon Sound engineer Ralph Couzens Assistant engineers Alex James and Jonathan Cooper Editor Alex James A & R administrator Sue Shortridge Recording venue Phoenix Concert Hall, Fairfield Halls, Croydon; 5 – 8 October 2019 Front cover ‘Woman wearing old fashioned clothes in field’, photograph © Mark Owen / Arcangel Images Back cover Photograph of Sakari Oramo © Benjamin Ealovega Photography Design and typesetting Cap & Anchor Design Co. (www.capandanchor.com) Booklet editor Finn S. Gundersen Publishers The William Alwyn Foundation p 2020 Chandos Records Ltd c 2020 Chandos Records Ltd Chandos Records Ltd, Colchester, Essex CO2 8HX, England Country of origin UK

90 © Benjamin Ealovega Photography©

Sakari Oramo CHANDOS ALWYN: MISS JULIE CHSA 5253(2) England • Essex • BBC Logo © 2011 Chandos Records Ltd Chandos Records 2020 Chandos Records Ltd 2020 Chandos Records Ltd 2020 Chandos Records Colchester p c ACT II CHSA 5253(2) TT 54:03 marks of the British Broadcasting of the British Broadcasting marks Corporation and used under licence. The BBC word mark and logo are trade mark and logo are The BBC word COMPACT DISC TWO can be played on can be played CD players. standard This Hybrid SA-CD 2-disc set

tenor ACT I soprano TT 60:59

in stereo and in stereo multi-channel All tracks available bass-baritone

COMPACT DISC ONE mezzo-soprano

(1973 – 76) Samuel Sakker – 1912) (1849 DIGITAL Anna Patalong Rosie Aldridge Benedict Nelson (1905 – 1985)

...... CHANDOS trademarks of Sony. SA-CD and its logo are are SA-CD and its logo ...... leader ...... BBC Symphony Orchestra Symphony BBC Igor Yuzefovich Sakari Oramo Miss Julie ActsAn Opera in Two Based the August by on Play Strindberg Libretto William by Alwyn Julie Miss Jean, valet Count’s the Kristin, cook the Ulrik, gamekeeper the The action takes place in the Count’s country house in Sweden on Midsummer in 1895. Night William Alwyn

CHANDOS Soloists / BBC Symphony Orchestra / Oramo CHSA 5253(2)