Aldeburgh Festival: Violet

Snape Maltings was the perfect setting in which to experience Violet, Tom Coult’s first opera and the first of this year’s Aldeburgh Festival. The collection of rural industrial red brick buildings on the edge of Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s Snape Marshes Nature Reserve could well mirror the isolated village over which the title character’s husband, Felix (played by Richard Burkhard), presides. The progress of the plot, which chronicles the erosion of time in this small community, is measured by the village clocktower, a guillotine-like piece of scenery adjusted at the beginning of each scene by clock keeper Andrew MacKenzie-Wicks to show the hours lost, at first imperceptible but soon catastrophic.

The ever-changing digital backdrop, along with bare-bones staging, give the performance a disorienting, era-defying feel, and what initially seems like period costume is broken down by costume designer Cécile Trémolières with the layering of modern props and textiles. As well as a Stepford Wives approach to gender roles, Violet hints at a cultish village hierarchy, with its breakdown reported by Laura, Frances Gregory’s maid character, with tales of villagers’ desperate sacrifice – animal and human.

Conductor Andrew Gourlay steers the London Sinfonietta through a complex score alongside superb performances from the show’s four-strong cast. Alice Birch’s libretto aligns perfectly with the sound-world Coult creates and, as foretold by the many signs in the concert hall lobby, contains a perfectly-pitched smattering of strong language.

As the village begins to break down into hysteria Anna Dennis (pictured below), who plays the once helplessly depressed Violet with captivating conviction, becomes ever more sure-footed, stomping across the stage in wellington boots, and eating cornflakes out of the box as she turns her husband’s desperate prayers into a spectator sport.

Anna Dennis as Violet © Marc Brenner

It goes without saying that an opera about the end of the world would be bleak, but Violet’s unyielding will to live is infectious and mirrors the opera’s resilient origins. Started as part of the Jerwood Arts Opera Writing Programme, Violet’s original premiere date of June 2020 almost made it another creative casualty of the pandemic – thank goodness it didn’t.

The 73rd Aldeburgh festival runs from 3 - 26 June in venues in the Aldeburgh area including Snape Maltings. Full programme and ticket information can be found here.