Janáček - Jenůfa (London, 2021)

Leoš Janáček - Jenůfa

Royal Opera House, London - 2021

Henrik Nánási, Claus Guth, Asmik Grigorian, Karita Mattila, Nicky Spence, Saimir Pirgu, Elena Zilio, David Stout, Jeremy White, Helene Schneiderman, Jacquelyn Stucker, Angela Simkin, April Koyejo-Audiger, Yaritza Véliz

OperaVision streaming - October 2021

The thing I love about Jenůfa - an opera that I would personally rate in my favourite top 10 - is its beauty and simplicity. There is nothing that is typically operatic about it or indeed about any Janáček opera. The heroine here is an ordinary person who suffers a terrible everyday misfortune, a mere accident that leaves her scarred, but also uncertainty about to handle a pregnancy outside of marriage. It's so commonplace that it's the kind of dilemma that has probably played out many times, secretly, in the Moravian community she lives. Janáček's genius is in how he expresses the deeper emotional and social undercurrents of that drama and the community.

The music and drama seems simple enough on the surface, but obviously it's a lot more complex in how this work weaves its particular magic. Even more so than just matching the music together with a sympathetic stage direction, the musical arrangements have a particular drive and rhythm that is absolutely essential to the work, as is the necessity of having a cast capable of handling the speech patterns of the Czech singing lines. Staged by Claus Guth with an irresistible cast, the Royal Opera House's production demonstrates a complete understanding of the rhythms and emotions at the heart of the work, the social context as well as the personal conflicts.

Indeed the first thing you notice about Guth's production is the social context for the individual personal dramas that take place there and which are so intertwined within it. Janáček's austere Moravian background is obviously part of that, but more importantly it's getting across the idea of a small enclosed community where everyone knows everyone, word travels fast, particularly when scandal is involved. In such an environment, passions become heated and anything can happen. It's the verismo of Cavalleria Rusticana without the Latin fire and bloodlust thirst for vengeance. Certainly Janáček's music is on a completely different plane of expression from Mascagni.

Michael Levine's sets depict the monochrome simplicity of the life, the closed and rigid attitudes of the community. In Act I, everyone wears plain black everyday traditional costumes, the surrounding, enclosing walls are wooden and there are no doors. Along the back is a row of identical beds where indistinguishable families where everyone lives side by side, the men get up and dressed for work, a row of women peel potatoes at the bottom of the bed. It's a Lars Von Trier Dogville kind of set, with no walls between the houses, all the community ever present on the stage. Everyone has a uniform life, and there is no room for individual expression, or escape.

Claus Guth is particularly good at recognising the patterns that are evoked in the music and finding a new way to represent that. It's not just the emotional patterns but the idea of time and repetition that Janáček enfolds within his music. Guth aligns that to the patterns of community life, of events, memories and stories from the past being repeated and recurring, never forgotten. Kostelnička's warning to Jenůfa of falling for an unworthy man is mirrored with her own experience, failing to heed her own mother's warnings. Alcoholism is inevitably a problem in places like this and you can be sure that the same events have played out many times before. The stage direction emphasises this with each of the couples in the background having baby cradles. It's the cycle of life, without the promise of renewal of The Cunning Little Vixen.

The visual representation becomes a little more heavy-handed in Act II. The beds from Act I are now upturned, the wire bedframes forming a cage around Kostelnička, Jenůfa and the hidden baby that cuts them off from rest of community. Aligned with the score and the vocal expression however, you certainly get a sense of the overwhelming desperation of the situation. In case that's not enough, there is a huge human-sized black raven perched on the house, the set all contrasted light and shadow, Jenůfa awakening from a nightmare of being crushed by a millstone as the weak no good Števa announces to Kostelnička that he is abandoning Jenůfa and the baby. 

Act III is also closely attuned to the mood of the drama, less to the local colour that you sometimes see in a production of this opera. There's a muted feeling to the wedding of Jenůfa and Laca here, everyone still dressed in black, with even the brightly coloured traditional folk costumes having a dark theme to them. It's certainly a contrast to the brightness of Christoph Loy's Deutsche Oper production or the kaleidoscopic colour of Alvis Hermanis's La Monnaie production each of which however have their own vision to offer and enhance the work. The walls still surround them and there is no exit for Jenůfa in her marriage. In fact her world is going to become even more captive by the past when the drowned baby is found in the ice, the lighting bringing a harsher coldness and darkness to the stage.

You can't fault the passion with which the orchestra performs under Hungarian conductor, Henrik Nánási. Just as critical to the deep emotional undercurrents are the singing and dramatic delivery of Jenůfa and Kostelnička and they are in exceptionally good hands here. Karita Mattila shows that she is still a force to be reckoned with, her open guilt and suffering for her actions truly heartfelt in the humanising of the stepmother. As Jenůfa this is another astounding performance from Asmik Grigorian, her star on the rise, the promise already noted and coming to fruition here in her Covent Garden debut. This is no minor role but it mustn't be an operatic star turn either, one that has a sense of humility and yet inner strength and resolve to deal with the trauma. Grigorian has all that and her performance hits home.

This is a deeply felt production of an opera that approaches the emotional depths of its situation and drama with a sense of beauty and compassion for its characters. Only opera can touch on this level, and Jenůfa is one of the best in how it brings to the surface, expresses and communicates the drama of little lives writ large without operatic over-emphasis. That's down to the talent and humanity of a composer like Janáček, but with Mattila on form and Grigorian utterly compelling, Claus Guth's Royal Opera House production respects and enhances everything that is great and original about the work.

Massenet - Don Quichotte (Bregenz Festival, 2019)

Jules Massenet - Don Quichotte

Bregenz Festival, 2019

Daniel Cohen, Mariame Clément, Gábor Bretz, David Stout, Anna Goryachova, Léonie Renaud, Vera Maria Bitter, Paul Schweinester, Patrik Reiter, Elie Chapus, Felix Defèr

Unitel/C-Major - Blu-ray

Good music is timeless of course but styles can go out of fashion, and the history of opera is lined with bodies of work by composers who have been the victim to changing trends, social upheaval and censorship. Jules Massenet is by no means a neglected or forgotten composer, but for me the majority of his work is very old fashioned and unlikely to inspire in today's opera world. There are certain exceptions - the remarkable Werther above all - and it's looking increasingly like his Don Quichotte is one of those works whose charms and qualities are proving to be timeless. Which is fortunate because that's pretty much what the opera is about.

And it's that idea that director Mariame Clément sets about demonstrating right from the outset of her 2019 Bregenz production. Even before the opera starts it's necessary to make some things clear, because as timeless as its music and themes are, the noble knight's gallant and chivalrous attitudes, his deference and respect towards beautiful women, his wooing and serenading and duelling love rivals, could be seen in a modern context as not only a little old fashioned and out of date, but even offensive by some. That just wouldn't do. Don Quichotte should leave you with that impression that he (and the opera) may be a relic of the past, but it's just a little bit sad that such ways have been left behind. Even as we respect and mourn their lack of relevance to the present day, perhaps there may even still be something to be learned from it.

Clément's Bregenz production rather catches the audience off guard however by opening with a slick modern Gillette advertisement showing that masculine gallantry is demeaning to women and that the new man should be much more progressive and egalitarian in their outlook. The modern man would scoff at the ways of Don Quixote, his lauding of women and putting them on a pedestal, and indeed that is exactly what happens in the opening act of the opera, where it's not just some uncouth villagers mocking the old Chevalier but a couple of modern opera goers mocking these outdated ideas from an on-stage audience.

The clever, very realistic advertisement, the meta-theatrical outbursts from a planted extra in the audience and the commentary from the 'front row' are clever enough to plant the seed of the idea that is developed in the rest of the opera. Clément doesn't rest on that however but employs a few other tricks in order to retain something of the traditional presentation of the opera while viewing it at a slight modern remove. In this case of course it's an entirely valid approach, as what is lost between the innocence of the old ways and the enlightened new ways is precisely what the opera is about, and not only that, but it even describes Massenet's opera itself.

Although it's undoubtedly necessary to make the comparison, Clément risks losing the audience by using each of the acts to present a different Don Quixote in each of the Acts. In Act II, a more modern Quixote and Sancho look quite different from their classical versions, Quixote here having a groomed and shaved appearance (Gillette presumably), Panza looking like a biker with tattoos and expressing a less favourable view of womankind. The two are in the bathroom of their hotel presumably, where Don Quixote sets himself against not a windmill but an extractor fan (maybe Sancho here is his drug dealer). It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but Clément just about gets away with it through her usual modus operandi of providing humour and spectacle, as the back wall opens up to a giant fan. More than anything however, it's the singing that provides all the necessary conviction.

The ambition of creating a Don Quixote through the ages where "we could be heroes" carries over again with no real continuity into Act III. Against a background of a graffiti covered wall in a suburban wasteland or HLM complex, Don Quixote is this time dressed - unfathomably - as Spider-Man confronting a gang of hoodlums in the 90s on his mission for Dulcinea. Act IV takes place in an office workplace with something of a Lois Lane and Clark Kent vibe about it. Any one of these ideas might have sufficient as a modernisation and provided greater consistency to the production (and opera), but it might not have established the necessary contrast between the gradual move away from the age of chivalry to the present day quite as well.

Behind it all - most evident in Massenet's score - there's a longing to believe that such heroism, romance, nobility, sincerity, pureness of heart and warmth of soul is still possible in our own time. That's blended in beautifully with the fear and sadness that Dulcinea expresses in Act V that even if it existed we probably aren't worthy of it, and as such it is scorned. The closest we have to an acceptance of heroes is that it's the stuff of movies, Dulcinea in Act V viewing the final moments of the wandering knight as if on a movie screen. Massenet's handling of the underlying emotional charge of this is just beautiful, and it's all the more touching when these characters are sung as well as they are in this Bregenz production.

Quite simply there are superb performances across all the principal roles. Gábor Bretz is a rich, soulful Don Quichotte and he’s matched for depth and warmth of baritone timbre by David Stout’s Sancho. In voice and presence, Anna Goryachova's Dulcinea presents a worthy object for the attentions of the noble chevalier. The conductor Daniel Cohen doesn’t hold back either on the emotional richness or dramatic impact of the music, powering the Wiener Symphoniker orchestra through Massenet’s wonderful score.

The all-region compatible Blu-ray presentation of the 2019 Bregenz Don Quichotte from Unitel/C-Major is impressive. Filmed in 4K, it looks marvellous in the 1080i Blu-ray HD resolution and comes with glorious Hi-Res soundtrack mixes in PCM Stereo and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, both of which give the singing in particular a wonderful resonance, warmth, and clarity. The only extras are in the booklet; a detailed tracklist and synopsis, with a note on the composition of the work by Massenet and some observations on the production by Mariame Clément where she puts the variety of each act down to the lack of narrative continuity in the almost separate scenes of the opera itself.

Links: Bregenzer Festspiele