Page 438 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

The biggest challenge presented by Violet, Tom Coult’s first opera, whose

premiere opened this year’s Aldeburgh festival, is getting to grips with the basic premise
of its plot. Playwright Alice Birch’s libretto tells the story of a woman who lives in the
biggest house in an insular village with Felix, her controlling husband, and Laura, an
over-attentive maid, and is compelled to follow a daily routine of strictly domestic
duties. “For as long as I have lived,” Violet says at one point, “I have never held
anything like hope or aspiration or joy for the potential of what my life could be.”

There’s no hint of where the village is and when the action takes place, and no
explanation either of why time there begins to collapse, losing one hour in each day,
until eventually at the end of the opera there is nothing left at all. As a clockmaker
marks off the steadily shortening days, village society steadily disintegrates – livestock
is destroyed, children are sacrificed – but Violet welcomes the freedom the chaos offers;
she builds a boat, and takes it to the shore to find out what the rest of the world is like.

‘Fabulous poise’ … soprano Anna Dennis. Photograph: Marc Brenner

It’s certainly a powerful construct, but one that has to be taken on trust for the opera to
convey that power. At times such that element of fantasy seems to grate against the
realism of Violet’s predicament and the genuine contemporary issues it raises. Though
quite simple, the production by Jude Christian with designs by Rosie Elnile, adds
another problematic layer by mixing historical eras in its visuals – the opening scene
suggests a Victorian household, while, later, the men sit down to a meal wearing
Elizabethan ruffs.