A dyspeptic tale of a between-stairs tryst that ends in suicide, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie shocked audiences with its caustic depiction of power, privilege and sexual exploitation at its 1889 premiere. Its abiding power to disturb saw it banned in the UK until 1939, and it wasn’t until 1984 that it was published uncensored in the playwright’s native Sweden.

Joseph Phibbs

Its dark allure has prompted several film versions, a television adaptation, a ballet and a quartet of operas, including those by Ned Rorem, William Alwyn and Philip Boesmans. Juliana, its most recent reiteration, finds the original’s late-19th-century setting updated to the present day, Laurie Slade’s libretto transforming the titular aristocratic daughter into a pampered and spoilt scion of a multi-millionaire businessman desperate for distraction from her Riviera lifestyle, the manservant Jean becoming an immigrant Bolivian chauffeur, Juan, with a dubious past.

Premiered in 2018 at the Cheltenham Festival (co-commissioners with the Presteigne Festival and Nova Music Opera Ensemble), Juliana makes its debut on disc with this vividly performed and recorded realisation by the ensemble under...