Leoš Janáček, Katya Kabanova: Soloists, Orchestra and Chorus of The Royal Opera House, cond. Charles Mackerras. Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 19.6.2007 (ME)

Janice Watson (Káta) Felicity Palmar (Marfa)
Linda Tuvås (Varvara)

‘There is much sadness and Slav tenderness and depth of feeling in it. May I find the right way to express it with equal intensity.’ Thus Janáček on The Storm, his source for the story of Katya Kabanova, and this fourth time round Trevor Nunn production, startlingly the only one the Royal Opera has ever mounted, certainly supplies more than enough intensity, although there is some tenderness missing in the treatment of the heroine.

Janáček’s young female protagonists are amongst the most sympathetic in opera, and no one who experienced Josephine Barstow’s portrayal of the rôle for Scottish Opera could easily forget the profundity and yet simplicity of the characterisation – when she sang ‘I felt as if I was entering Paradise’ you had a sense of her innocence and rapture, but in this production Katya was presented as a bit of a neurotic ninny, and that great line was rather skated over. Janáček told Kamila Stösslova that Katya was ‘gentle by nature… a breeze would carry away – let alone the storm that gathers over her’. Janice Watson has the right edge to her voice to convey Katya’s vulnerability, but I felt that there was too much posturing going on – the kind of sentiments which Katya has to utter seem to me better shown through understated intensity rather than ‘sawing the air with your hand’.

Kurt Streit (Boris) and Janice Watson (Káta)

Katya’s fellow doomed soul, Boris, was sharply characterised by Kurt Streit; Janáček is never easy on his tenors, and both Streit and Toby Spence’s Kudrjáš sang eloquently, although I was less impressed with the Tichon of Chris Merritt in perhaps the most thankless of the three tenor parts. Linda Tuvås was a skittish Varvara – the role was conceived as a mezzo part, so her light soprano did not sound quite right, especially when she asked ‘Oh, how could anyone not love her?’ – a much deeper tone is required at moments such as this. Felicity Palmer yet again stole the show with her incarnation of the ancient Slavonic matriarchy, her every condemnation of her daughter-in-law’s immoral behaviour enough to shatter even someone made of sterner stuff.

With Mackerras in charge, the orchestra was, of course, the star of the evening, rising to lyrical heights in the prelude and dramatic ones at the end of Act II, where the feelings of Katya and Boris are expressed in powerfully charged passages which were played here with near ferocity. It was a pity that the grandeur, emotional depth and delicacy evident from the pit were not replicated throughout the production. Nunn’s basic concept as expressed in Maria Björnson’s designs is an apt one in that the parallels with Munch are obvious – indeed, some scenes appeared almost as direct stagings of paintings like ‘Anxiety’ and ‘Head of a Young Woman Silhouetted against the Shore’ – but I missed the sense of a claustrophobic, matriarchal world which I have seen in other productions. In the Act II sewing scene, having the three women fingering an immense curtain as though they were the three Norns simply does not suggest the conventions being described. The sense of oppression was elsewhere finely etched in Patricia Collins’ lighting, and the storm worked well.

Following on from ENO’s successful staging of Jenůfa last year, it’s good to see Janáček’s later opera at Covent Garden, although surely by now it should merit a new production? Until then, it’s still worth going to hear an orchestra in full flow under the baton of the man who more or less single-handedly established Janáček as a major operatic composer of the 20^th Century as far as British opera houses were concerned.

 

Melanie Eskenazi

Pictures © Bill Cooper