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Music
Leos Janacek
Conductor
Bernard Haitink
Director
Oliver Tambosi
Designs
Frank
Schloessmann
Lighting
Hans Toelstede
Re-created
by
Bernd Grube
Jenufa
Karita Mattila
Kostelnicka
Anja Silja
(her stepmother)
Laca Klemen
Jorma Silvasti
Steva
Buryja
Jerry Hadley
Grandmother
Buryjovka
Eva Randova
Jano
Gail Pearson
Foreman
of the Mill
Jonathan Veira
Barena
Rebecca Nash
(a servant
girl at the mill)
Maid
Elizabeth
Sikora
Mayor
Jeremy White
His
wife
Carole Wilson
Karolka
Leah-Marian
Jones
(the daughter)
Tetka
Jennifer Higgins
(the aunt)
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Royal
Opera House
Covent
Garden
28
September - 19 October 2001
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The star of this
unmissable Jenufa
at Covent Garden is Anja Silja, who
substituted for Deborah Polaski. She
is one of a dwindling number of old-time
great sopranos with a musical, vocal
and dramatic range that few can match
today. She does full justice to the
complex and imperious personality of
Kostelnicka, Jenufa's stepmother, who
both loves her stepdaughter and kills
the latter's own love-child. Silja's
portrayal of Kostelnicka's almost relentless
intensity, tenderness, grief, pride
and defiance is unsurpassed, and leaves
one feeling utterly drained
To sustain dramatic
power alongside such a commanding presence
is hard, but Karita Mattila as Jenufa,
a peasant girl living in a socially
repressive Moravian village, does it
superbly. She, too, summons an astonishing
range of emotions. In the first act
alone, we see her enslaved to overwhelming
desire as well as tenderness for the
vain, selfish and faithless Steva who
makes her pregnant (only, in Act 3,
to desert her for Karolka, the local
mayor's daughter, who offers him brighter
social prospects). We see her angrily
contemptuous of the illegitimate Laca,
who, unlike Steva, his half-brother,
is a man of integrity, conscience, and
loyalty, and is also genuinely in love
with her. We see her all-too-human relationship
with her stepmother: submissive, rebellious,
trusting, resentful. And finally, we
see her, hurt and humiliated and confused,
as Laca slashes her face in order to
render her unattractive to Steva - a
task in which he immediately succeeds.
Jorma Silvasti, as Laca, sings with
beautiful lyricism and phrasing, but
Jerry Hadley, though he makes a very
convincing Steva, is sometimes out of
tune, perhaps because he seems to be
forcing his fine voice beyond its natural
limits. Eva Randova, as their grandmother,
sings with magnificent sonority and
assurance.
The second Act,
in which the righteous and pious Kostelnicka
murders her stepdaughter's newly-born
baby in order to spare them both the
social indignity of an illegitimate
child, must be one of the most powerful
scenes in the operatic repertory. It
is superbly crafted by Silja and Matilla,
as well as by Haitink and his orchestra.
Perhaps the
hardest of all scenes to bring off is
the moment in the third Act when Jenufa,
having finally seen through the feckless
Steva, recognises that Laca is the only
one who has stood by her throughout
and accepts him as her husband. Both
the story and the music could easily
be rendered cloyingly and unconvincingly
sentimental; but neither are, and the
opera ends on a note of redemption and
justice that feels thoroughly convincing,
indeed profoundly moving. Matilla's
Jenufa, in Act 1 a naîve peasant
girl, has learned to love, to see, to
forgive, and to overcome suffering.
A word of congratulations
should be addressed to the director,
and those responsible for designs and
lighting. A work of this dramatic and
musical intensity can easily call forth
a hectic, overwrought production that
ends up obstructing both music and action.
This temptation was heroically resisted
by Oliver Tambosi and his team, who
presented us with a sophisticatedly
simple stage that gave the singers every
opportunity to shine - a rare achievement
in the world of opera directors.
Finally, Bernard
Haitink marvelously evoked the restlessly
repetitive rhythmic patterns, vernacular
melodies, and harmonic density to be
found in this great score. Though, occasionally,
his beat became a little metronomic
and his range of mood and colour too
limited, he gave to the whole admirable
coherence and structure.
For decades
Jenufa,
and its composer, Janacek, have not
received their due. Yet Janacek is,
with Schoenberg, Berg, Bartok and a
handful of others, one of the great
innovators of twentieth century music
(and, almost incredibly, a contemporary
of Puccini). The Czech writer, Milan
Kundera, ascribes this neglect to Janacek
having 'immolated his universal music
on the altar of a nearly unknown language';
but this cannot be the whole story.
Such resistance must also be explained
by something radically new in Janacek's
musical grammar; in how he uses almost
unknown Czech folk music; in his daring
rhythmic and tonal imagination. Given
the spate of recent productions of Jenufa
- in Hamburg, Salzburg and now Covent
Garden - this resistance may thankfully
now be crumbling
Simon
May |
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