Trois fragments de Juliette and La voix humaine in the Gothenburg Opera in Sweden, the 13th of April, 2019

The crown jewel of my trip to see relatives in Sweden was the evening spent in the Gothenburg Opera to see two short operas. The joint theme of the operas was announced to be illusion and love.

The first opera was Bohuslav Martinů’s “The Key to Dreams”. Martinů composed in 1957 an opera in Czech called ”Julietta”, whose subtitle was ”The Key to Dreams”. The composer himself wrote the libretto based on a play by Georges Neveux. Martinů had originally wanted to make the opera in French, so he later wrote a shorter French opera “Trois fragments de Juliette” based on “Julietta” and this opera was now performed in Gothenburg. It contains some scenes from Julietta, but in different order.   

The story tells about Michel, who comes to a town looking for Juliette, whose voice he has heard and fallen in love. He finds out that Juliette and the townspeople live in the dreams and they have no memories of the past. Michel rejects the attempts of the seller of memories to sell (false) memories to Juliette and tries to tell her the truth. In the end Michel, who is bewitched by Juliette, refuses to return to the real word and joins the people living in their dreams.   

The director of both the operas - David Radok – had combined the operas so, that both were played in the same sets with the same costumes. I absolutely loved the direction; a masterpiece! The atmosphere of the first opera was truly dreamlike and the misty set design (Radok) and the video projections by Dalibor Fencl just increased the illusion.  

From the point of music the opera was also impressive. Martinů’s music gave room for ambiance and the Gothenburg Opera’s Orchestra conducted by Claire Levacher made a huge impression on me. Kerstin Avemo as Juliette and Joachim Bäcström as Michel were superb in their main roles.  

The second opera of the evening was “La voix humaine” (The Human Voice) by Francis Poulenc. The libretto was written by Jean Cocteau (originally this was also a play). 

In the story a woman speaks on the phone with a man, who has left her. They go through their relationship and the call is cut several times. The woman confesses that she still loves the man and in the end she talks about committing suicide.

”La voix humaine” is an opera about feelings and the illusion of love; about a woman, who is forced in the end to face the reality of one-sided love. Kerstin Avemo, who sang the role of the woman, did a stellar performance supported by Poulenc’s wonderful music. You could feel the tension even in the audience. The same misty set suited also this opera perfectly. The strength of her feelings rose clear and touching from the mist. After the performance I felt absolutely surreal as you should after the best operas. This opera experience alone would have definitely been worth a trip to Gothenburg!