Enigma Variations was choreographed by Frederick Ashton to Edward Elgar’s music in designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman. It was first performed by The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in 1968. Elgar...
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Lynn Seymour and Anthony Dowell in the final moments in Ashton’s ballet A Month in the Country, 1976.
Credit: © Anthony Crickmay/Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Julia Trevelyan Oman (1930-2003). British theatre, film and television designer
Julia Trevelyan Oman studied at Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal College of Art before working in television on productions such as Dixon of Dock Green and Jonathan Miller’s Alice in Wonderland. Known for her meticulous attention to historical detail, she worked for The Royal Opera on productions of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème and Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. Trevelyan Oman made a small, but significant number of ballet designs: for Frederick Ashton and The Royal Ballet she created sets and costumes for Enigma Variations and A Month in the Country. She later designed Swan Lake in a production for Boston Ballet staged by Bruce Wells, Violette Verdy and E Virginia Williams, and for Peter Wright she created the sets and costumes for The Royal Ballet’s 1984 production of The Nutcracker.
A Month in the Country was created in 1976 by Frederick Ashton for The Royal Ballet. It was based on the play by Ivan Turgenev, and was almost more than 40 years in gestation. It was pushed on its...