Katěrina Kabanova – Eva-Maria
Westbroek
Marfa Ignatěvna Kabanicha –
Karita Mattila
Varvara – Anna Lapkovskaja
Boris Grigorjevič – Simon
O’Neill
Váňa Kudrjáš – Florian Hoffmann
Tichon Ivanyč Kabanov – Stephan
Rügamer
Savël Prokofjevič Dikoj – Pavlo
Hunka
Kuligin, Passer-by – Viktor Rud
Glaša – Emma Sarkisyan
Fekluša – Adriane Queiroz
Woman – Liane Oßwald
Andrea Breth (director)
Annette Murschetz (set designs)
Silke Willrett, Marc Weeger
(costumes)
Alexander Koppelmann (lighting)
Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Thomas Guggeis (conductor)
 |
| Katya Kabanova (Eva-Maria Westbroek) Images: Bernd Uhlig, from the 2014 premiere |
Given the success of Andrea Breth’s Berlin Staatsoper production of Wozzeck,
it was perhaps not surprising to emerge from this Katya Kabanova feeling similarly drained. It had not previously
occurred to me to consider the points of affinity between these two tragic
operatic masterpieces of similar length, written at a similar time – Berg started
composition considerably earlier and completed his work later – but Breth’s
approach played a suggestive role. For redemption, spiritual uplift, any such
glimmer, one would likely have sought in vain – certainly at its conclusion. Where
Wozzeck’s expressionism was tempered or
expanded by something one might characterise, with certain reservations, as
realism – not that the opera ‘itself’ lacks that too – here it is perhaps the
other way around, Janáček’s drama extended in its final act by something that,
if not quite expressionistic, certainly went beyond the realm of realism
conventionally understood. The storm and its aftermath are, in any case,
clearly not intended purely in meteorological terms; here, however, Breth’s ritualistic
stylisation affords opportunity, without abdication of tragic content, for a
form of starkness somewhat different from that more readily encountered.
There, as at the opening, we
see action, movement, that seems either to tend towards or away from a tableau:
secularised, doubtless, like Janáček’s outlook itself, yet not without a sense,
for better or ill, of the religious. This, it seems, is a grim, difficult world
in which women especially, but many men too, are cowed by social and political
rather than more strictly theological constructs. ‘Modesty’ of female dress is
clearly no matter of choice; likewise, the shrouded identity, if one may call
it that at all, of many of the women we see. Repression and hypocrisy are, at
least in considerable part (for perpetrators, that is, not for victims). And,
of course, whatever the social similarities Breth suggests with Wozzeck, heightened by a destitute Eastern
Bloc setting perhaps even going beyond that chosen by Christoph Marthaler for Paris several years ago, a major distinction remains the
centrality of women to Janáček’s opera.
If anything, Breth pushes that
further. We see Katya treated to the point of torture by domestic incarceration
in a cupboard (or is it a refrigerator?). We witness perhaps a truly formidable
Kabanicha, a fur-clad Karita Mattila, rule the roost and let her guard down in
private: second-act drunkenness leading to an extraordinary scene with Dikoj,
in which, rather than reject his advances, she joins him on the dinner table to
masturbate him, only to react with anger when his stamina proves insufficient
for her needs. And we see, likewise at beginning and close, a small girl led
across the stage in quasi-religious procession. Who is she? Is she one of the
female characters, whose life might have turned out differently, had it not
been for this vicious society and ideology? Is it a baby girl Katya might have
lost? There are various possibilities open to us; if only there had been to
her.
A particular strength of Thomas
Guggeis’s conducting of the Staatskapelle Berlin lay in kinship with Breth’s
conception. No one in his right mind would eradicate Janáček’s lyricism from
the orchestra, let alone from the vocal line. (How could one, anyway?) That
said, these remained brief moments of thwarted possibility amongst a notably
dark account of the score, its niggling motivic, even cellular, possibilities
pointing already to the Dostoevskyan world of From the House of the Dead. If there were times, especially during
the first act, when I missed a little in the way of more conventional musical
narrative, it seemed to me that this was very much an aesthetic choice – and one
that had me ask why, the answers seeming more than justifiable in context. When
the storm came, the unleashing of orchestral power – almost a tone poem with
voices – said what must be said. As, of course, in her conception, did
Kabanicha at the close.
Mattila’s delivery of her final line, thanking the people for their efforts, offered an unanswerable
summation not only of her richly expressive vocal portrayal; not only of her
imperious stage presence, unquestionably possessed of a complicated back-story concerning
whose nature we could only speculate; but also of work and tight-knit production
as a whole. Equally impressive was Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role, a
character whose soul as well as her vocal line would constantly take flight, as
much in societal repression as in those few, rare – in every sense – moments of
free expression. Katya’s, Westbroek’s, and Janáček’s humanity shone through,
extreme difficulties notwithstanding, indeed in many ways very much on their
account. Simon O’Neill, if a little lacking in stage credibility, sang clearly
and convincingly as Boris. Florian Hoffmann and Anna Lapkovskaja made for a
lively, engaging pair of ‘secondary’ lovers; at least there was some hope
remaining of matters turning out better in their case. Pavlo Hunka’s Dikoj and Stephan
Rügamer’s Tichon proved keenly observed throughout. All, then, contributed intelligently
and movingly to the greater dramatic conception. What a conception that continues to be.
