JULIANA
Joseph Phibbs composer
Laurie Slade librettist
Midsummer's Eve on a Swedish waterside estate – the night is short and passions run high in Joseph Phibbs' exciting new chamber opera.
Juliana is recovering from a broken engagement; with her father away on business, she has only a canary for company. She's bored and depressed, so goes to the kitchen in search of distraction ...
Laurie Slade's libretto brilliantly transplants August Strindberg's most celebrated play Miss Julie (1899), to a contemporary Swedish setting, confronting a number of topical issues head-on (including the divide between rich and poor, immigration and the transgression of class, social and sexual boundaries).
Joseph Phibbs was born in London, and studied at The Purcell School, King’s College London and Cornell University. His teachers have included Param Vir, Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Steven Stucky. Described recently by BBC Music Magazine as 'one of the most successful composers of his generation', his works have been premiered by some of the world’s leading conductors, including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vassily Petrenko, Gianandrea Noseda, Sakari Oramo and Edward Gardner.
Rivers to the Sea, his largest orchestral work to date, was premiered in 2012 under Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Royal Festival Hall to widespread critical acclaim, and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. It has since received numerous performances both in the UK and abroad, winning the orchestral category of the 2013 British Composer Awards. A more recent work, Partita (a joint BBC/Koussevitzky Music Foundation Award commission), was premiered in 2016 at the Barbican under BBC Symphony Orchestra chief conductor Sakari Oramo.
