In pictures: English National Opera's Julietta

Martinu's 1938 opera was based on a surrealist play by Georges Neveux, Juliette, ou La clé des songes (Juliette, or the Key of Dreams). It tells the story of a bookseller from Paris, Michel, and his journey to find a woman whose voice he once heard in the wilderness. In this first act we see Michel (Peter Hoare) revisiting a French seaside village where he first spotted a girl in a window, in the hope of finding her again. In this scene he's meeting the townspeople, who all have amnesia. The woman on the left has stolen a lock of his hair. The man in the middle (with his hat off) believes himself to be a police inspector. The spine of the play is about involuntary memories being provoked by the playing of the accordion (like Proust's madeleines), which becomes central to our design for this first act.
Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith

Act one (detail). The townsfolk have all lost their memories, and are only aware of the present.

This production was originally designed by Antony McDonald for Paris Opera and staged by the Grand Theatre in Geneva.
Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith

In this scene from act two are Peter Hoare (Michel, right), Andrew Shore (here playing a dealer in memories, centre) and Julia Sporsén as Julietta - although we don't find out until the third and final act that she's Julietta. The man in the middle is selling them memories of a holiday they took in Spain. The holiday never happened.
Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith

The third act takes place - like in Kafka's Trail - in a central Office of Dreams. Michel has gone there trying to return to his original dream of Julietta. He's trying to get access to where he first met her.
Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith

At the top is the administrator of the Office of Dreams, to the right its caretaker. The three men are "the Grey Men" - people who have preferred to live forever in their dreams, so in life have become insane. Michel (centre), too elects to continues his search and, rejecting reality, settles for a half-life of dreams.

Julietta opens on 17 September at English National Opera and is in rep until 3 October.
Photograph: Richard Hubert Smith