| Julie is a more intimate work, a one-act chamber opera based on the play by the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, Miss Julie, written in 1888. A quintessentially naturalist play, the plot of Julie unfolds in an aristocratic residence in Sweden on the night of Saint John. The count’s daughter, Julie, draws Jean, his father’s valet, away from his fiancée, the cook Christine. The irreparable then occurs. Jean, fired by ambition, persuades the young countess - haunted by her family past, dreaming of falling from her elevated social position and now destroyed by what has been done - to steal money from her father in order to flee abroad. The situation becomes intolerable for Julie, and Jean pushes her to commit suicide by proving that their union is utterly impossible. |
