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| Images: Donald Cooper Karolka (Soraya Mafi), Mayor's Wife (Natalie Herman), Jenůfa (Laura Wilde), Laca (Peter Hoare) |
Coliseum
Grandmother
Buryja – Valerie Reid
Kostelnička
Buryja – Michaela MartensJenůfa – Laura Wilde
Laca Klemen – Peter Hoare
Števa Buryja – Nicky Spence
Foreman, Mayor – Graeme Danby
Jano – Sarah Labiner
Barena – Claire Mitcher
Mayor’s Wife – Natalie Herman
Karolka – Soraya Mafi
Neighbour – Morag Boyle
Villager – Claire Pendleton
David
Alden (director)
Charles
Edwards (set designer)Jon Morrell (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Claire Gaskin (choreography, revived by Maxine Braham)
Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Stephen Harris)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Mark Wigglesworth (conductor)
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| Jenůfa |
This
now seems as though it took place in another world – because it did. I nearly
did not make it, waiting more than half an hour to change trains at Tower Hill,
before desperately trying to find a cab to take me to the Coliseum. Yes, that
monsoon rainfall that hit London – and, well, you know the rest… In some ways,
it was fitting, if heartbreaking, that this outstanding demonstration of
European internationalism should have opened on the night it did: the night
when the forces of bigotry, those who would have stoned Jenůfa, took us where
they did. I might have preferred to hear Jenůfa
in Czech, but who cares? Although the words – excellently translated, insofar
as I am competent to judge, a considerable ‘insofar’, although compared to my
countrymen and, to a lesser extent, countrywomen… - sometimes sound in
themselves a little odd in English, they and their meaning were powerfully,
indeed viscerally conveyed. (I know that ‘visceral’ is a much overused word in
such contexts, but here it certainly was the mot juste, or whatever ‘decent’ English phrase that fascist Farage
would have us use.) Moreover, hearing the words in English certainly had the
advantage for a non-Czech speaker – my fault, I know – of underlining when words,
especially but not only when repeated, took on not only vocal but orchestral
life of their own as speech rhythms (even if the speech rhythms were thus a bit
peculiar!) That cavil-which-is-not-a-cavil will be really my only attempt at
finding one, for this was magnificent, a reproach not only to xenophobes but to
all those who have wished ENO ill, and who, in certain case, continue to do so.
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| ENO Chorus |
The
(relatively few) reservations I had about David Alden’s production last time
around in 2009 have either evaporated or, seemingly, been dealt with in
revision. Perhaps it was as much a matter of the outstanding performances we
saw on stage – although they were pretty good too in 2009. I am not entirely
sure which, since it is always difficult, no impossible, to remember precisely what
happened when, so shall not offer detailed comparisons. At any rate, the shift
from Czech Hardy-land – I was put in mind of Boulez’s less-than-favourable
description of earlier Janáček as ‘Dvořák in the country’, thereby exalting the
late works to which he came to, well, late – to a more overtly, at least to us
rootless cosmopolitans, vicious urban-ish setting, perhaps holding something in
common with Christoph
Marthaler’s Paris Katya Kabanova.
The people are poor and they live in a small, ‘tight-knit’ community, with all
the problems that brings: that is what is important, not whether we see lots of
wheat sheaves or whatever. Indeed, a sense of the bucolic might be argued to
distract from the tragedy at hand; that is certainly given no chance of
happening here.
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| Grandmother Buryja (Valerie Reid), Jano (Sarah Labiner), Jenůfa |
Charles
Edwards’s brilliant designs, Jon Morrell’s costumes, Adam Silverman’s costumes,
the choreography of Claire Gaskin, here revived by Maxine Braham: all these
combine with Alden’s razor-sharp focus upon human tragedy to present something
out of the normal (and that is before we even come to the music). Walls close
in, the storm intervenes, worlds (visual) collide, often with the greatest
physical menace. The Mayor’s Wife outfit and make-up are just as much part of
the drama, as the terrifying rattling on the shutters of the Kostelnička’s
house and the eventual smashing of the glass. Gesamtkunstwerk is a word so divested of meaning, historical or
contemporary, that it is perhaps beyond salvation, but if salvation there might
be – and there is precious little chance of that dramatically – this would
offer unimpeachable witness. If I find some of the deviations from the
naturalistic a little peculiar in themselves, they serve that greater purpose;
indeed, when considering that, I recalled Alden’s
brilliant ENO Peter Grimes. I was
less troubled there by such matters, perhaps because I like the work ‘itself’
less; that, though, should not be the point, and the greater dramatic point of
small-community, small-minded bigotry punches one in the gut just as it did in
Britten’s opera. The advance of the chorus, the villagefolk gunning for their primitive,
punitive, perverted ‘morality’ will long remain in the mind; so will the
cowardly attempt at rescue of a broken Števa. Here, wall-hugging, often rightly
derided, had justification, the desire both to escape and to self-incarcerate
inescapably drawn to the fore.
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| Kostelnička (Michaela Martens) |
I
cannot recall hearing a finer performance from the ENO Orchestra. Mark
Wigglesworth’s conducting – he must
be brought back as Music Director, with a settlement for the company to match –
was the most intense I can recall in this work, perhaps in any Janáček opera.
It grabbed one by the throat, just like the work of a great conductor in Wozzeck, and never relinquished its
grip. It was not all fierceness, though; the open, sympathetic, European
humanity of Janáček’s score shone through all the more warmly in the context of
such an agón. The pounding repeated
chords at the second half registered all the more strongly for the turmoil both
onstage and in the world outside; but they were the orchestra’s and
Wigglesworth’s too. Biting, ferocious, generative: they were everything a
musico-dramatic prelude should and must be. As the lights flickered in duet
with the xylophone, a world internal and external shook. Wagner has no monopoly
in operatic renewal of Attic tragedy: this was a communal and, yes, a political
rite.
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| Jenůfa and Laca |
That
warm sympathy was equally apparent in Laura Wilde’s lovely account of the title
role. This was no stock object of sympathy, of circumstance; we experienced her
agonies, but as an agent too, albeit, like us, an agent constrained,
(near-)destroyed by her ‘community’. Michaela Martens, almost the only returning
member of the 2009 cast, again presented a woman of strength as well as
goodness, that strength smashed to pieces – how broken she looked and behaved
in the third act! – by what she had done. Vocally, she soared; dramatically, in
the very best sense, she plummeted. Valerie Reid was similarly broken by that
stage as Grandmother Buryja. She intrigued, as the finest performances of this
curious role will: we knew that she and whatever mistakes she had made were
fundamental to the tragedy unfolding, without ever quite knowing what they had
been. We guessed, though, thus making us complicit with the chorus of terror.
Its magnificent contribution throughout, beyond ‘visceral', if something can be
so, was yet another standing rebuke to the encircling vultures: ironically so,
given its members roles as just that.
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| Jenůfa and Števa (Nicky Spence) |
Peter
Hoare’s Laca took us on as moving a ‘journey’, with apologies for the cliché,
as that of Jenůfa; youthful (in knowing excess?) silliness was transformed into
diffident, difficult maturity. I was quite unprepared for the violence of Nicky
Spence’s first-act Števa. Again, being rid of the bucolic doubtless helped, but
what generally comes across as winning charm was here a brazen display of power
from the start, somewhat tempered, eventually, by Jenůfa’s intervention towards
the end of the act, but only somewhat. That rendered his ghost-like appearance
and disappearance all the more terrifying in the final act. Sarah Labiner’s
splendidly boyish Jano, Soraya Mafi’s spirited Karolka, Graeme Danby’s skilfully
differentiated roles Natalie Herman’s nasty-piece-of-work Mayor’s Wife: they
and all the rest contributed to a true company performance. Even in,
particularly in, the direst of tragedy, we find our catharsis somehow.
