The Juliet Letters is the 14th studio album by the British rock singer and songwriter Elvis Costello, released on compact disc as Warner Brothers 45180. The entire instrumental backing is provided by The Brodsky String Quartet. Costello described the album as a song sequence for string quartet and voice and it has a title. It's a little bit different. It's not a rock opera. It's a new thing. It peaked at no.18 on the UK album chart, and at no.125 on the Billboard 200.

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Costello first encountered the Brodsky Quartet in 1989, a performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall of the entire cycle of string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich. They met for the first time in November 1991, to begin work on the concept and execution of this album project. Costello viewed this album as neither his first stab at classical music, nor the Brodsky's first attempt at rock and roll.

With a concept of imaginary letters being sent to an imaginary recipient, Juliet Capulet, all five musicians contributed to the writing of the lyrics as well as the music. No overdubs were made, the album recorded in its entirety live in the studio. One single was actually released from the album, the track Jacksons, Monk, and Rowe, although it did not grace the charts in either America or the UK.

Several artists have either recorded or mounted productions of the song cycle. It was recorded by Canadian singer Kerry-Anne Katz and the Abysse String Quartet recorded the song cycle in February 2006. In September 2006, husband-and-wife duo Michelle and David Murray released a new version arranged for voice and piano by David Murray. In 2008, Jake Endres and the Theatrical Musical Company produced the first fully staged theatrical performance of The Juliet Letters, complete with two additional original songs. The production opened in September 2008 in Minneapolis at the Southern Theater. In 2009, a Polish singer-actress Katarzyna Groniec translated the whole Juliet Letters material into Polish, recorded and released it as Listy Julii with a band of trombone, saxophone, clarinet, French horn, tuba, flute, keyboards, bass guitar, and drums. (wikipedia)

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Elvis Costello - The Juliet letters 1993
a song sequence for string quartet and voice 
(Burbank, Calif. Warner Bros)

 1. Deliver us 
 2. For other eyes 
 3. Swine 
 4. Expert rites  
 5. Dead letter 
 6. I almost had a weakness  
 7. Why
 8. Who do you think you are
 9. Taking my life in your hands 
10. This offer is unrepeatable 
11. Dear sweet filthy world 
12. The letter home
13. Jacksons, Monk and Rowe 
14. This sad burlesque  
15. Romeo's seance 
16. I thought I'd write to Juliet  
17. Last post 
18. The first to leave 
19. Damnation's cellar  
20. The birds will still be singing


Elvis Costello - vocal
Ian Belton - violin
Michael Thomas - violin
Paul Cassidy - viola
Jaqueline Thomas – cello