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.

Janáček - Jenůfa (Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2014 - Blu-ray)

Leoš Janáček - Jenůfa

Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2014

Donald Runnicles, Christof Loy, Michaela Kaune, Jennifer Larmore, Hanna Schwarz, Will Hartmann, Ladislav Elgr, Simon Pauly, Stephen Bronk, Nadine Secunde, Martina Welschenbach, Fionnuala McCarthy, Jana Kurucová, Alexandra Hutton

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

Christof Loy's strength as a director, as he demonstrates here to remarkable effect in the Deutsche Oper's production of Janáček's Jenůfa, is the depth of characterisation he brings to the drama. It's never an imposed reading, but one that can be found in the music itself - no more so than in Janáček's extraordinary score for this work. The setting in Loy's productions might not always conform to the letter of the libretto, but he nonetheless invariably creates a strong environment for the characters to work in and reveal their inner lives. He has a lot to work with in Jenůfa, and with some equally strong musical and singing performances, the full power of Janáček's work is there for all to hear and see.

Jenůfa is a simple story, but it shows how terrible things can happen to anyone, accidentally, through no fault of their own. The consequences of these events and the responsibilities it confers on people can be an unendurable burden, causing great suffering and misery. As a humanist however, Janáček recognises the truth that beauty can flourish even in the worst of situations, and that happiness is always a possibility. This note of hope that he introduces in the almost impossibly beautiful epilogue to Jenůfa is one of the greatest moments in all of opera. Christof Loy shows the truth of this in the Deutsche Oper production, but in order to reach that moment of near-transcendence, he also has to show the full horror of what leads up to it.

What Loy achieves so well in Act I is the sense of urgency and anticipation, the rush of emotions, the implied threats of violence and the conflict of sentiments that are going to set off a tragic series of events. It's a perfect match for the complex, urgent rhythms of Janáček's weaving, rolling and menacing score. There's Jenůfa's fear of her cousin Števa being conscripted into the army, her concern heightened by the fear that she will have to face the anger of the community alone, since she knows she is unmarried and pregnant by him. Her stepmother, Kostelnicka, unaware of her condition, dislikes Števa, her own experience leading her to conclude that he is a drunken good-for-nothing who is unsuitable for marriage. Laca is in love with Jenůfa and, jealous of the concern she shows for Števa, glowers and roars, ready to explode in a fit of jealous rage. Add Števa, stupid, drunk and celebrating, a misplaced knife and a crowd and there will inevitably be trouble, but this is only the beginning of a series of terrible events.

The fact that those actions are going to have grave consequences has however already been indicated right from the outset in a silent scene that shows Kostelnicka brought into an interrogation room. As well as setting her up as a key figure in what is to follow, Loy also shows his ability to look beyond the surface drama into the real heart of what makes Janáček's Jenůfa beat. Understanding Kostelnicka's motivations is important, but it has to be seen in the context, attitudes and morals of the Moravian village community in which the opera is set. That means much more than just using regionally appropriate costumes and backdrops, and for Loy all is needed is plain costumes and an austere white box with sliding panels that open up and close Jenůfa off from the community outside.

That fully creates the occasion for Jenůfa to be a victim of circumstance, her nature and instincts bent to conform to the pressures of society and the community. In terms of laying out the tragedy and the part that Kostelnicka and Laca play in it, Loy not only sets down strong characterisation, but he has two fine singers who are capable of drawing every ounce of character that is inherently there in the drama and the music. Jennifer Larmore in particular is one of the best Kostelnicka's I've ever come across. The scene where she resolves to remove the baby from the picture is chilling and credible, as is how she remains affected and weighted down later as a consequence of her actions. As a singing performance, Larmore's performance is simply outstanding and everything it ought to be, but there's real personality and meaning given to the words and how they manifest in her actions.

Laca's role is a dual one that is rather more complex than the character's simplicity of expression would suggest, but all the contradictions and their implications are fully brought out in Loy's staging and in the performance by Will Hartmann. From one perspective, Laca's accidental scarring of Jenůfa is the single most significant episode that sets off a chain of tragic events, but it is also significant that he also brings about the resolution to them. Loy ensures not only that the actions of the others are fully weighed for the impact they have in what occurs - the villagers, Števa, Kostelnicka and even Jenůfa herself - but that the sense of love, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation that comes about arises out of the tragedy is even greater. Laca is an important part of this, and Hartmann not only captures that stupid blind, jealous rage of the character, but also his sensitivity and the depths of his feelings for Jenůfa, unconditionally defending her from the community outrage.

There's a danger that Jenůfa could remain a passive figure in the opera with no ability to direct her own fortune, her own passions subject to the actions, whims and projections of others. Her beauty and the purity of her feelings is important however and that comes through intact, if scarred. Michaela Kaune isn't as strong an actor as Larman, but the expression of the essence of Jenůfa is all there in her singing and performance and she clearly puts everything into the role. The same sense of commitment is applied to the characterisation and the performances elsewhere. Even Števa has real personality. He's not just a drunken good-for-nothing or cowardly, but just a boy. He's passionate and clearly loves Jenůfa but he's not grown-up enough to take on the responsibilities of a disfigured wife, a child and making a home, but he is just too weak to stand up to the more forceful female personalities around him.

Similar attention is applied even to secondary roles, but none of Loy's ideas or interpretations exist in isolation or are created out of nothing. All of this is there in the libretto and in the score itself and Donald Runnicles ensures that the precision of the rhythms and their emotional undercurrents all perfectly match the composer's intentions as well as what is happening on the stage. On BD/DVD, Brian Large elects to cut out the audience applause between acts, allowing the force of the drama to playing the drama straight through, and it does make a significant impact, Loy's direction and the acting performances drawing you right in. There are no extra features on the BD50 disc, and the image and audio are reasonably good, but not exceptional. Subtitles (which can only be selected from remote or pop-up while playing) are in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Korean and Japanese.

Links: Deutsche Oper Berlin

Janáček - Jenůfa

Leoš Janáček - Jenůfa

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2014

Ludovic Morlot, Alvis Hermanis, Sally Matthews, Charles Workman, Nicky Spence, Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, Carole Wilson, Ivan Ludlow, Alexander Vassiliev, Mireille Capelle, Hendrickje Van Kerckhove, Beata Morawska, Chloé Briot, Nathalie Van de Voorde, Marta Beretta

Culturebox, Medici.tv, La Monnaie Internet Streaming - January 2014

Jenůfa is a challenging opera to perform and stage. Musically, despite its seemingly simple rhythmic pulsations, this early 20th century opera by Janáček bridges Romanticism and Modernism, but it has the additional complication of being very much related to Moravian folk music and to the particular rhythms of spoken language that are an important aspect of Janáček's style. An indication of the challenges of performing the work is how varied interpretations of Janáček's musical scoring can be in attempting to find that precise rhythm in music and language. It doesn't help, I find, that Sir Charles Mackerras' near-definitive editions and recordings of many of Janáček's operas set an incredibly high standard for anyone else to match.

In terms of the storyline, Jenůfa also appears to be a simple folktale, a morality tale of village life, the melodrama of a local beauty who scandalously falls pregnant and is spurned by her lover, only to have her face disfigured by a jealous admirer. Not only that, but in an attempt to resolve the difficulties and the shame that lie upon the family and in an attempt to open a way to a marriage for Jenůfa, her frantic stepmother, Kostelnička, drowns the new-born baby in a frozen river. The storyline revolves around these few highly intense situations in a way that not only makes it difficult to dramatise, but to find a suitable tone that is not overwhelmingly bleak and despairing.

On the contrary, based on the lush beauty of the musical score, the director and conductor actually have to find a way to make the work beautiful and achieve a conclusion that is heart-warming and tender. Jenůfa is not a work then that benefits from a naturalistic interpretation or from any kind of harsh social realism, but at the same time it has to emphasise or make real the human qualities that arise out of their efforts to overcome the bleakness of the situation. That's no small challenge. Relatively new to opera, the Latvian theatre director Alvis Hermanis however takes an unusual approach to the stage presentation of this remarkable work for La Monnaie in Brussels. It's not quite perfect, but it's every bit as impressive and innovative as any staging of this unique and remarkable work should be.

Drawing heavily from the turn of the century Art Nouveau movement, with imagery taken directly from the works of the Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, Hermanis' production for La Monnaie is therefore a highly stylised one that is far from naturalistic. At the same time however it is authentic in terms of the roots of the work in Moravian folktale and culture, while also being entirely sympathetic to the tone adopted towards the story by Janáček in his stunningly beautiful and evocative musical scoring. There are no conventional props or sets, yet the location, the background of the characters and their nature is represented brilliantly in the puffy-sleeved, embroidered and garlanded traditional costumes as well as in the elaborate decorative designs of the set.

That goes as far as using a line of dancers almost as a decorative border and background for the drama, positioned behind the singers throughout Act I and III. The upper level is used for projections of swirling and scrolling Art Nouveau patterns with Alphonse Mucha images that reflect the Czech Moravian setting and the characters, opening up at times to present the chorus who contribute to the background dramatic action and reaction. The singers act out the drama in stylised movements and dance-like gestures, never naturalistic but expressive nonetheless, retaining the folk quality of the story even though it adapts the body-language of formalised Oriental dance theatre.

Visually, it's a sumptuous display. Words alone can't do it justice. It's simply ravishingly and almost heart-breakingly beautiful, which is something you could say also about Janáček's score, so it's clearly wholly appropriate and in tune with the musical account of the work. That's evident in the way that Act II is treated entirely differently from the formalised tableaux of the opening and closing acts. Act II presents the reality of the situation in a much more socially realistic way, depicting a poor cottage or a run-down apartment in a housing block from a 1960s' Czech New Wave film, with peeling paint, a stove, a bed and religious pictures and icons on the walls. The music written by Janáček bears out this division of styles between ritualised folktale and the human reality, so close attention has clearly been paid to the score.

The production however doesn't perhaps always come to life the way it should or respond entirely to those deeply tragic moments and emotional undercurrents, but it's hard to imagine how any staging could. Most productions of Jenůfa (and they are rare enough) tend to follow the minimalist principle of the drama being enacted by just a few characters, but this one, while it might appear to be overly busy, at least fills the stage with context. The sense of community is of vital importance in Jenůfa, and that's evident in all the cultural and costume iconography, on a stage that has dancers in constant motion, and that is enacted often before the watchful, judgemental eyes of that small community looking down from those upper levels.

Ideally, you'd like to have native Czech singers who are capable of reproducing the speech rhythms that are so vital a component of the opera. It's rare however that anyone is able to cast in this way for the roles of Jenůfa and Kostelnička, but outside of Elisabeth Söderström and Eva Randová from the definitive Charles Mackerras recording in the 1980s, this Monnaie production is as good as I've heard with Sally Matthews and Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet in those roles. Charbonnet feels the strain of the high pitch towards the end of the opera, but she has good presence and dramatic force in her delivery. Sally Matthew's dramatic performance is a little bit blank in the context of the stylised delivery, but she's stronger in Act II's realism and her singing performance is solid and consistent throughout. Nicky Spence is a fine Števa, but it's Charles Workman who stands out here, his gorgeous tone and impassioned delivery in Act III making that difficult acceptance of Laca's dreadful actions and his redemption meaningful and truly heart-warming.

The 2014 La Monnaie production of Jenůfa is available to view for free via internet streaming from the Culturebox, Medici.tv and La Monnaie sites. Subtitles are in French only, although the La Monnaie site also has optional Dutch subtitles.

Janáček - Jenůfa

Leoš Janáček - Jenůfa

Teatro Real, Madrid, 2009

Ivor Bolton, Stéphane Braunschweig, Amanda Roocroft, Miroslav Dvorský, Nikolai Schukoff, Deborah Polaski, Mette Ejsing, Marta Ubieta, Károly Szemerédy, Miguel Sola, Marta Mathéu, María José Suárez

Opus Arte

One of the composer’s earliest works, from 1904, Janáček’s Jenůfa is a wonderful piece of work with a melodramatic but gritty story that has its roots in realism and traditional popular folklore, and it has music to match with a lush sweep of Wagnerian Romanticism, the punch of Slavic dance arrangements and a modern Strauss-like sensibility that ties the nature of the characters and their actions to identifiable but complex modern musical and speech tone patterns developed by Janácek. Unfortunately, this particular performance, recorded at the Teatro Real de Madrid in 2009, is for the most part not the most impressive means of experiencing one of the greatest operas of the early twentieth century.

It’s difficult from this production to grasp any sense of time, location or community sensibility that is so important in identifying the nature of Jenůfa’s dilemma. Jenůfa is in love with Števa and engaged to be married to him, despite his half-brother Laca being more devoted to the young woman, and perhaps a better match. When her stepmother Kostelnička publically delays the marriage until Števa gets his act together, she is unaware that Jenůfa is pregnant. The secret birth of a baby outside wedlock makes the marriage to Števa and the fate of Jenůfa more complicated to arrange, as does the scar on the young woman’s face accidentally left there by the jealous Laca, and despair over the turn of events drives Kostelnička to take matters into her own hands.

Although it does seem to improve considerably by the time we reach the powerful and climactic third act, the whole sense of fluidity and rhythm of the work and the all-important speech tones seem to be lost in the uneven tempo of Ivor Bolton’s conducting. It seems to limp from one scene to the next somewhat disjointedly, and it’s not until quite late in the performance that the conductor manages to bring the precision and dramatic tone required out of the orchestra. The staging by Stéphane Braunschweig is also inadequate and it’s not so much that the set is minimalist – each scene consisting of bare walls and one significant object in a spotlight to indicate location – as that there is little here to support mood or the dramatic action. Up until the final act, it’s a fairly anonymous staging, dark, with stark lighting on the characters, that doesn’t have the requisite impact and fails to draw the viewer into what is very much a story related to the community, as well as an interior journey.

The singing is good in all the principal roles, if not outstanding. There’s nothing here, for example, to create the kind of impression or investment in the roles that Elisabeth Söderström and Eva Randová achieve in their incredibly passionate and chilling renditions of Jenůfa and Kostelnička for the classic Charles Mackerras recording of this opera (although it is perhaps unfair to expect any live performance to match this). Amanda Roocroft however is a fine Jenůfa and Deborah Polaski an excellent Kostelnička, both of them growing into the roles (or perhaps it just took me a while to acclimatise to them), gathering intensity as the opera reaches the third act. Nikolai Schukoff and Miroslav Dvorský as rival half-brothers Števa and Laca, also give fine performances. None of them however are helped by the inadequacy of the staging or by the mediocre playing of the orchestra.

Something close to the real impact of the work is achieved by the time we get to the remarkably beautiful and poignant duet at the conclusion of the opera, but otherwise, this production succeeds only as far as making Jenůfa sound like an ordinary opera, when it’s really a work that has so much more to offer and deserves a lot better than this in terms of staging and performance. It’s not helped at all by the inadequate video transfer on the Blu-ray. The extremely dark stage (as is often the case in Teatro Real productions in my experience) scarcely looks better than standard-definition, with little detail and a highly contrasted image that exhibits lighting fluctuation and exposure variations. The image is somewhat juddery, and this isn’t helped by jerky camera work. The disc contains only a Cast and Synopsis, but there is a more detailed examination of how the music works alongside the drama in the accompanying booklet.