Katya Kabanova is a grim piece of stage realism. The storm, which is the name of the Ostrovsky play on which the opera is based, treats the tempest both realistically and symbolically. But it is how the storm plays out in the lives of the real people in the play, and opera, that is so powerful. Driven by a deeply unsatisfying and oppressive marriage, the heroine not only has a passionate affair, but is driven to suicide.
      David Alden’s new production at English National Opera captures all the stark reality of the opera and its plot. The scenery is minimal, and what is there seems only half-built. The bleakness and incompleteness of the central characters’ internal life is mirrored in the unfinished, distorted scenery (cf Caligari). This is a nightmare world for most of the characters. Two striking images also appear: an icon at the beginning and a Soviet-style poster near the end. Both represent oppression of one kind, either religious or societal. The lighting of Adam Silverman reinforces this bleakness by sharp highlighting and pronounced shadows. To look at the set says everything that underlies Alden’s perception of the opera.
      So to do the outstanding performances. The iron corset and extraordinary torch-like hat (what an inspiration that was for this malevolent Lady Bracknell) would tell one much one needed to know about the character and role of Marfa Kabanova the life-strangling mother-in-law from hell who dominates the miserable lives of her son and his wife Katya. But her frozen spirit is brilliantly realized both vocally and dramatically by Susan Bickley. She uses the edge in her voice to convey the icy hand of control she exercises, and it is cruelly credible that her Oedipal son Tikhon should cling both metaphorically, and at one moment literally, to her skirts. Around her warily circle her son and his wife. John Graham-Hall depiction of the dominated son who is passionately in love with his new wife Katya, but unable to break free enough to allow this love to grow happily, is again absolutely perfectly portrayed. Again, he uses his English tenor voice to convey precisely the convention-bound husband that Tikhon is. Opposite him is a superb performance of the hapless Katya, a free spirit caught in a maternal web. She manages also to convey both in actions and vocally the sense of a freer spirit gradually being caged. Her meekness but growing frustration make both the stilted relations with her husband and the secret freedom of her love affair with Boris marvelously vivid. The two-sides of this character spring off the stage electrically. Boris, too, is well cast. Not exactly the ‘Romantic’ lover, his dependence on his evil-minded uncle, Dikoy (almost too convincingly played and sung by Clive Bayley) and his hapless love for Katya bring all the range of characterization that Stuart Skelton brought to the complex character of Peter Grimes last year. Poor Katya, that she should fall in love with another weak man.
      By way of contrast to these psychologically crippled characters are two delightfully ‘innocent’ (how long will that last?) youngsters, Varvara and Vanya (Anna Grevelius and Alfie Boe). Both managed, as they must, to bring a sweetness to the drama. They represent the other side of the coin inhabited (if one can inhabit a coin!) by Katya, Kabanicha, Tikhon and Boris. Janáček points this up at the magical end of the second act where a folk-song (for the innocent lovers) with its regular phrasing and simple harmony, is contrasted with the more passionate, rhythmically free and harmonically complex music for Boris and Katya. This wonderful quartet was one of the moving highlights of the evening.
      Janáček’s score is located as much in the pit as the stage. His views of melodic lines mirroring patterns of speech leaves the orchestra free to colour in the drama. Mark Wigglesworth elicited some beautiful playing from the ENO orchestra, but at first I thought his lyrical approach was not going to be enough to convey the stark realism of the plot. But as the evening wore on the initially rather subdued orchestra came to life and in the end I thought his well-placed precision began to rise to match and equal Alden’s hauntingly bleak view of the opera. This is definitely a production and performance not to be missed.
Roderick Swanston