William Alwyn: Miss Julie
Chandos

In his October 2019 review of the Barbican performance of William Alwyn's Miss Julie, The Times' Richard Morrison wondered, “Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?” It's a sentiment many an opera aficionado will likely echo, now that a recording of the work featuring the same vocal and instrumental forces has appeared. The double-CD, nearly two-hour release couples a scintillating performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo's direction with soprano Anna Patalong in the title role, bass-baritone Benedict Nelson as her husband Jean, mezzo-soprano Rosie Aldridge as Kristin, the cook, and tenor Samuel Sakker as Ulrik, the gamekeeper. Adding to its appeal, Alwyn's opera, teeming with tension, drama, and suspense, sits comfortably alongside works by Strauss, Ravel, and Puccini, and in places hints at their influence.

Oramo's isn't the first recording of Miss Julie, incidentally. Alwyn (1905-85) wrote his final large-scale work between 1973 and 1976 (a first attempt was aborted in the ‘50s due to differences with librettist Christopher Hassall), after which it was broadcast by the BBC a year later and a commercial recording issued in 1983. First staged in 1997, it had not been heard in the UK until the performance by Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra brought it again to public attention.

Based on August Strindberg's 1888 play, the two-act opera opens at the country house of a widowed Count in Sweden near the end of the nineteenth century on Midsummer Night. His daughter, Miss Julie, has been dancing and flirting with Ulrik and the count's valet, Jean, at the estate's barn, prompting him to pronounce her behaviour to Kristin “Crazy, utterly crazy!” Miss Julie responds to his admonitions with a demand for a kiss, which leads in turn to sexual intimacy. Dawn brings the realization that her reputation and his position will be destroyed if what's transpired is made public. Devising an escape plan that involves eloping to Lugano and starting a hotel, Jean dismisses her upon discovering she's penniless, leading to Miss Julie choosing suicide as the only way out, much as her mother'd done. Alwyn generally sticks to Strindberg's storyline, though a few changes occur, the substitution of a new character, Ulrik, in place of Strindberg's chorus of villagers a noteworthy example. Given its emphasis on naturalism and flesh-and-blood characters, it's easy to understand the appeal Strindberg's play would have for the composer, who infused his own libretto with the intensity of the original drama.

Unfailingly accessible, sensuous, and lyrical, parallels between Alwyn's music and other composers can be proposed at particular moments, with the opening waltz rhythms evoking Ravel's La Valse and later passages Strauss's erotic “Dance of the Seven Veils” from Salome (at one point self-identifying as Salome, Miss Julie asks Jean, “Would you like me to dance and shed my seven veils 'til I'm naked before you?”). Alwyn's work as a film composer (music written for no less than approximately two hundred movies) must be mentioned, especially when his experiences writing it influenced so significantly his approach to opera writing. It led him to realize, for example, how powerfully film music could wordlessly enhance character and intensify atmosphere. Throughout Miss Julie, he tailors the musical material to match the narrative trajectory and support the vocal material, with every line of the libretto and its extreme emotional shadings thoughtfully complemented by the score. Consider how effectively, for instance, he underscores Miss Julie's longing gaze upon the moonlit garden with sumptuous writing, or later the tender, dream-like turn the score takes when Jean introduces the idea of Lugano as a destination and the two profess their love for each other. Hear also the way ceremonial horns punctuate Kristin's protestation to Jean, "Class is class, and don't you forget it,” and how the music slows and quietens as the opera enters its final stage, the subdued tone mirroring Miss Julie's exhaustion. Alwyn's score makes for a mesmerizing and gripping listening experience.

The opera's first moments catch the ear immediately with a shrill opening figure, waltz tempo, and passionate exchanges between Jean and Kristen. It isn't the only time the rhythm appears, either, Alwyn strategically using it in a progressively distorted form to convey the deterioration developing within the household and the relationships therein. Other details stand out, too. The following of Jean's characterization of Miss Julie as “Crazy, utterly crazy!” with references made by him and Kristen to the Countess's suicide by poison foreshadows the daughter's own demise. Miss Julie's delayed physical entrance not only creates dramatic anticipation, it enables Jean and Kristen to establish the character's instability and recklessness before she appears. The story's tragic turn is intimated when the orchestral introduction to the second act begins forebodingly, the scene presenting the morning after the lovers' tryst and the emotional temperature rising as Jean, broaching their plan to start a hotel in Lugano, discovers Miss Julie has no money.

Anna Patalong and Benedict Nelson are exemplary in the main roles, each giving remarkable voice to the dramatic extremes their characters experience. Patalong masterfully handles the wild fluctuations in Miss Julie's personality, from seductive and petulant to desperate, demanding, and, ultimately, resigned. Nelson proves a tremendous match in responding to her tempestuous nature with equal fervour and conviction. Aldridge and Sakker make the most of their secondary roles, and Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra impress as much, their rendering of the score fastidious in its attention to detail and overall sensitivity.

September 2020