Jenůfa, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 7 January 2024

Grandmother Buryja – Hanna Schwarz
Kostelnička Buryja – Rosie Aldridge
Jenůfa – Vida Miknevičiūtė
Laca Klemeń – Stephan Rügamer
Števa Buryja – Pavol Breslik
Foreman – Grigory Shkarupa
Jano – Victoria Randem
Barena – Adriane Queiroz
Mayor – David Oštrek
Mayor’s Wife – Natalia Sckrycka
Karolka – Maria Kokareva
Herdswoman – Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein
Auntie – Rebecka Wallroth
Voices – Olga Vilenskaia, Ben Bloomfield

Director – Damiano Michieletto
Revival director – Marcin Łakomicki
Set designs – Paolo Fantin
Costumes – Carlo Teti
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti

Choreography – Thomas Wilhelm  

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Axel Kober (conductor)

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2021 premiere, with different cast)

Damiano Michieletto’s 2021 production of Jenůfa, now receiving its first revival, offers a relatively straightforward retelling of the story without prettifying or sentimentalising. Paolo Fantin’s set designs are stark: semi-transparent, enabling one to see, as in a small rural community, most of what is going on, whilst still maintaining some degree of secrecy. This is a world of violence and poverty, and so it feels, whilst avoiding undue specificity: the level of abstraction is such that the message need not be restricted to any one milieu. That enables a degree of symbolism, perhaps not entirely unlike Olivier Tambosi’s 2001 Covent Garden production (my first, with Bernard Haitink and Karita Mattila no less).

Ice/water is central to Michieletto’s conception. There is something icy to the walls, but more fundamentally, not unlike Tambosi’s giant boulder, although the other way up, an iceberg descends from the ceiling or sky. It hems in the action to varying extents, according (I assume) to the emotional and broader dramatic temperature. Števa hacks a block of ice to pieces, with violence shocking both in itself and in its childishness, when he has been rejected for conscription. Jenůfa’s child is buried and preserved in the ice too, of course, that discovery provoking the final reckoning and thus enabling the advent of some limited hope and here, literally, sunlight for Jenůfa and Laca. And its melting provides a downpour to punish, symbolically at least, the Kostelnička. The community, arguably the true villain here – Števa is too weak to deserve such billing – is represented by a few actors, whose shifting shape and role say most of what needs to be said. We can fill in the gaps, bring something to the table ourselves, or simply watch things ‘straight’. Whether the chorus’s placing, largely offstage, was at least in part a response to pandemic restrictions, I do not know, but it works, perhaps paradoxically, to enhance the onstage claustrophobia.

 

Choral singing was good, although coordination with stage and pit sometimes went awry. Indeed, conductor Axel Kober’s coordination of his different forces often left something to be desired, the opening seriously awry, both in that respect and concerning balance of orchestral lines. By and large, Kober gave a good enough impression of the score without penetrating deeper. The Staatskapelle Berlin responded in kind, often more than that. But where the musical action should erupt, forcing itself into our consciousness as a literal matter of life or death, Kober seemed largely content to offer an accompaniment to scenic action: involving enough, but an accompaniment nonetheless. There was little sense, at least from the orchestral direction, of the composer’s speech rhythms determining line and form (surely a crucial argument for preferring Janáček in the original Czech). 

The cast did a better job in that respect and others. Vida Miknevičiūtė seems very much to be a soprano of the moment, unable to put a foot (or note) wrong. Her assumption of the title role proved no exception: no mere victim, but a somewhat headstrong young woman, who made choices of her own as well as suffering those of others. Here was to be heard a definite command of the composer’s writing and its dramatic implications, as well as stage presence and collegiality. The same could be said of her colleagues, Rosie Aldridge a compassionate yet broken Kostelnička, Hanna Schwarz still an estimable force as Grandmother Buryja. Pavol Breslik skilfully trod a tightrope as Števa, keenly alert to the character’s contemptible weakness, whilst maintaining allure and vocal security. Stephan Rügamer’s Laca grew in stature as Števa receded from our – and Jenůfa’s – consciousness. Sterling work was done in the smaller roles, Maria Kokareva’s Karolka, Natalia Sckrycka’s Mayor’s Wife, and Victoria Randem’s Jano shining examples for me. There was fine ensemble work here, in which it was rightly difficult to distinguish between singing and acting.

Jenůfa, Deutsche Oper, 17 January 2020

Jenůfa (Rachel Harnisch), Grandmother Burya (Renate Behle); Images © Bettina Stöß

Grandmother Buryja – Renate Behle

Kostelnička Buryja – Evelyn Herlitzius

Jenůfa – Rachel Harnisch

Laca Klemeň – Robert Watson

Števa Buryja – Ladislav Elgr

Foreman – Philipp Jekal

Mayor – Stephan Bronk

Jano – Meechet Marrero

Barena – Karis Tucker

Mayor’s Wife – Nadine Secunde

Karolka – Jacquelyn Stucker

Shepherdess – Fionnuala McCarthy

Christof Loy (director)

Dirk Becker (set designs)

Judith Weihrauch (costumes)
Bernd Purkrabek (lighting)

Eva-Maria Abelein (Spiellleitung)

Thomas Wilhelm (choreographic assistance)

Christian Arseni (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: Jeremy Bines) 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

If Jenůfa fails to move, something will have gone terribly wrong. That is not, however, to say that one should take for granted a performance as moving as this. It takes a good deal of musical work to present an opera with this degree of excellence. This, in short, was an evening that heard the Deutsche Oper at something close to its very best.

Grandmother Burya, Laca (Robert Watson), Jenůfa

Guiding that excellent work throughout, whether on stage or in the pit, was the hand – perhaps better, were the hands – of Donald Runnicles. I have heard some distinguished conducting of this opera, from Bernard Haitink at Covent Garden (my first Jenůfa and, indeed, my first Janáček opera) to Jiří Bělohlávek in concert and, most recently, on the fateful night of 23 June 2016, Mark Wigglesworth for ENO. Each of those conductors brought something distinctive and valuable to the opera. Runnicles and his outstanding orchestra had nothing whatsoever to fear from comparisons. If I applaud his gifts of synthesis, that is not to say that the parts coming together to make their sum were insignificant: quite the contrary. An ear for detail, be it for specificity of timbre or rhythm, combination of instrumental and vocal line, the composer’s singular method of motivic writing, and much else besides, was crucial here in capturing and holding not only the musical but also the dramatic attention. That coming together, however, was equally crucial. Not unlike Mozart – or Shakespeare, for that matter – Janáček does not judge. To be sure, we make our own judgements, yet the humanity informing the composer’s mission involves understanding of why people do wrong, why they did not act otherwise. The conductor’s task in communicating that is to balance detail and broader sweep, not unlike the composer himself does in his astonishing art. There was human wisdom here on both counts: aware, perhaps, of something beyond, something divine, yet knowing that the truths in which this drama would partake must also keep their distance. They have their roots in something specific, even folk-like, without ever being reducible to that. Once again, this seemed to be communicated instinctively, however great the preparation and skill in maintaining that fond, even dangerous illusion of the immediate.

Kostelnička Buryja (Evelyn Herlitzius), Jenůfa

In an instructive programme note, Runnicles spoke of Janáček following an aesthetic of Kargheit (which connotes both frugality and bleakness) when it comes to sonority, an aesthetic opposed by well-meaning, Straussian smoothing of the edges and rounding out by the conductor Karel Kovařovic for the first Prague performance. A comparison with Rimskified Mussorgsky is not, as Runnicles, suggests, so far from the mark (though I still think that deserves something, somewhere of a place). We no longer hear either as eccentric, let alone incompetent, and we are surely right to do so. But again, to hear the craft, the meaning, the art in such writing requires work: no music worthy of the name really plays or sings itself; nor, one might add, does it listen to itself. Orchestral musicians as much as the conductor, as much as the listener, need to respond to finely judged balances between fragment and melody, speech rhythm and musical rhythm, individual timbre and blend. They must also do so with a knife-edge appreciation of dramatic timing. That unforgettable xylophone solo there, a solo violin intervention there, the crucial difference between trombone (Janáček) and horn (Kovařovic) sonority, and so on: these were not only presented, but felt, believed in. There is no need to damn Kovařovic any more than there is Rimsky-Korsakov. They did what they did; it spoke to many. One could truly feel, however, that Janáček spoke on this occasion – and that one thereby felt the cruelty, the bleakness, and yet ultimately the humanity and redemption too that this opera requires us to feel.

Jenůfa, Kostelnička

That also requires the small matter of excellent singing and acting – and of excellent collaboration. Here again, I had no reservations. Rachel Harnisch led us surely down a tragic yet sorrowfully redemptive path with a Jenůfa whose initial youthful spirits rendered the inhumanity of her subsequent, consequent tribulations all the more harrowing. I cannot imagine any human being having failed to root for her. Robert Watson and Ladislav Elgr faced off splendidly as Laca and Števa, the former wounded and wounding, increasingly noble of spirit, the latter’s cocky allure – seemingly the whole village, not only its girls, under its spell – undermined by a weakness of spirit that is always difficult to convey through song. (In a sense, it is the Don Ottavio problem, here skilfully surmounted.) Not the whole village, of course, for that would be to reckon without the Kostelnička – and without Evelyn Herlitzius’s Kostelnička. If I say it was a typically astonishing performance, I do not mean to undermine its specificity. Herlitzius is one of those singing actors who somehow both remains quite herself and assumes, even transforms the character of the role she is playing. Initially hard, increasingly wild, always with good in her heart: one could hardly bear to look her in the face, or the aural equivalent, yet equally knew that one must. This was spellbinding artistry, in the truest sense. Yet wherever one looked and listened, there was necessary artistry, as much a crucial part of the musicodramatic synthesis: Renate Behle’s Grandmother, wiser than her carefully prepared surface let on, in knowing that principle may also lie in surviving, in not succumbing to tragedy; Nadine Secunde’s properly ghastly Mayor’s Wife; Philipp Jekal’s Foreman, wanting initially to be Števa, yet perhaps suggesting that all was not quite as it should be: these characters and more made Janáček’s community and thus drama what they were. So too, of course, did the excellent Deutsche Oper Chorus.

Jenůfa, Števa (Ladislav Elgr), Laca

I have left Christof Loy’s production until last because it seemed – and this is not always a claim I should make for that director’s work – more a framework in which the work and its performance could unfold than an interpretation. Aside from the conceit of having the imprisoned Kostelnička look back at the story that had led her to where she now found herself, there was not so much to report. Occasional dramatic pauses made their point too, having us collect our thoughts – and our emotions. I have seen more interventionist and, perhaps, more telling stagings; it is fair to say, for instance, that I learned and was challenged more from David Alden at the Coliseum. But that did not seem to be the point on this occasion. If a staging permitted, even gently led me to be moved by the drama that unfolded, then it may also be accounted successful.

Jenůfa, English National Opera, 23 June 2016

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 Martens
Jenůfa – 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)

 

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

Jenůfa, Czech PO/Bělohlávek, 18 April 2016

Royal Festival Hall

(concert performance)

Jenůfa – Adriana Kohútková

Kostelnička Buryjovka – Karita Mattila
Števa Buryja – Jaroslav Březina
Laca Klemen – Aleš Briscein
Stárek – Svatopluk Sem
Stařenka Buryjovka – Yvona Škvárová
Karolka – Lucie Silkenová
Rychtář – Jana Hrochová
Jano – Marta Reichelová
Pastruchyňa, Barena – Kateriňa Keněžiková

Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno (chorus master: Petr Fiala)

Czech Philharmonic Orchestra

Jiří Bělohlávek (conductor)

 

Images: Petr Kadlec
Adriana Kohútková (Jenůfa)

 

Some people, it seems, are never satisfied. (Is that a tu quoque which I hear before me? Surely not.) I heard a few people during one of the two intervals during this wonderful Jenůfa lament that this was not a staged performance and therefore could not do the work justice. Well, if you felt that strongly about it, you might perhaps have considered not going… I actually very much enjoy many concert performances: not as a substitute, nor indeed as the ‘same thing’. They have their own virtues, not least the greater ability to hear the orchestra – no negligible thing, when the orchestra in question is the Czech Philharmonic. At the risk of sounding unduly reactionary, I also like on occasion not to be distracted by an inadequate production; that, of course, is an argument against inadequate productions, rather than staging as such, but let us leave that now for another day.

For me, perhaps the greatest single virtue of this particular performance was the playing of the Czech Philharmonic. I think this might actually be the first time I have had opportunity to hear this great orchestra ‘in the flesh’; it is difficult to imagine that I could readily have forgotten a previous encounter. What surprised me somewhat was that it did not sound quite so much as I had expected from (largely old) recordings. Its golden sound actually sounded to me in many respects more Viennese than Czech (or at least Moravian, for this is of course a Bohemian band). The beauty of the strings had to be heard to be believed; this was not unlike the Vienna Philharmonic on a good day (perhaps in the celebrated Janáček recordings under Charles Mackerras), or even the nearby Staatskapelle Dresden. Horns, likewise, seemingly straight out of Tannhäuser, perhaps via Bamberg. And the delectable woodwind solos would have graced any orchestra in the world, whilst retaining a sense of that most contentious of ‘national’ or ‘regional’ claims: rootedness in place.

None of that, however, was ‘mere’ beauty. What struck me about what I heard from all sections and all instruments of the orchestra, as well as the ensemble as a whole, was how, under Jiří Bělohlávek’s wise, intelligent, loving direction, what little I know (mostly from Janáček’s music!) of Czech speech rhythms truly seemed to ‘speak’ in the orchestra as well as in the vocal line. Just as much as Mussorgsky, this was instrumental recitative and arioso brought to lyrical life. Bělohlávek’s tempi were varied, with plenty of time for relaxation as well as for pressing on; above all they sounded ‘natural’.

 

Karita Mattila and Jiří Bělohlávek

 

That bringing to lyrical life to which I referred was also much to be heard from a fine cast. The sheer goodness of Jenůfa’s soul – a Czech Hardy, I often think, in this work – was to be heard in Adriana Kohútková’s performance. The compassion this Jenůfa had in abundance was ultimately to be repaid. Jaroslav Březina’s initially swaggering Steva had its subtleties too. His was an admirably balanced portrayal, in which this listener at least felt no need of a staging. Likewise Aleš Briscein’s Laca, whose initial petulance was but the start of a development of character with which we could truly sympathise. What singing, ‘purely’ as singing too! The Puccinian element of the relationship between Laca and Jenůfa was apparent, but so was the difference of Janáček: no sadism here. Karita Mattila’s Kostelnička was earth-shattering, an extraordinary move from the title-role (she was my first Jenůfa, in Bernard Haitink’s magnificent Royal Opera performances). There is no denying Mattila’s ‘star quality’: when she stands, let alone when she sings, everyone in the hall will sit up. This, however, was a deeply felt performance, too, the richness of her voice again the quintessence of compassionate humanity. Yvona Škvárová's Stařenka seemed less a portrayal than an inhabition. Indeed, all of the roles, however ‘small’ or large, were very well taken: a lesson to opera houses of the incalculable blessings of a real sense of ‘company’. To round things off, the choral singing, from the Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno, was outstanding: here, perhaps was something a little rougher than what we had heard in the orchestra, even, dare I say it, more Moravian.

 

Jenůfa, English National Opera, 21 March 2009

The Coliseum

Grandmother Buryja – Susan Gorton
Kostelnička Buryja – Michaela Martens
Jenůfa – Amanda Roocroft
Laca Klemen – Robert Brubaker
Števa Buryja – Tom Randle
Foreman – Iain Paterson
Jano – Julia Sporsén
Barena – Claire Mitcher
Mayor – Peter Kestner
Mayor’s wife – Susanna Tudor-Thomas
Karolka – Mairéad Buicke
Neighbour – Morag Boyle
Villager – Lyn Cook

David Alden (director)
Charles Edwards (set designer)
Jean-Marc Puissant (associate set designer)
Jon Morrell (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Jon Clark (revival lighting)
Claire Gaskin (choreographer)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Eivind Gullberg Jensen (conductor)

Having grown so used to disappointments in the opera house, the recent nadir having been Covent Garden’s Flying Dutchman, what a relief it was to encounter such a triumph, on the last night of its all too short run at the Coliseum. Let me get the odd gripe out of the way first. The English translation was, even of its kind, inadequate. Even with a better version, one would have missed the sound of Czech, its speech rhythms so fundamental to Janáček’s vision. It is testimony to the overall quality of the performance, however, that I soon ceased to care. And there were a few oddities about David Alden’s production. Some aspects of the updating to post-war Eastern Europe work better than others. The tarting up of the girls of the town – this does not seem to be even a modern rural community – is probably overdone. With the exception of the dowdier Jenůfa – she should have been a teacher, as Grandmother Buryja tells her – they all look like prostitutes. Perhaps a point is being made here concerning moral hypocrisy but there ought to have been better ways to do so. Nor did I understand why when, in the second act, Jenůfa prays to the Virgin Mary, she does not face the statue the production has provided for. It is not as if any point seemed to be made about turning away. The mayor and his wife seemed oddly portrayed in the final act, as though they really were part of some rural backwater; their caricatured vulgarity detracted from rather than intensified the drama. Laughter does not seem an appropriate reaction to what is taking place here.

Otherwise, Alden’s production did a great deal to heighten the impact of Janáček’s searing drama. The updating is not strictly necessary, of course, but it was a relief generally to be spared that folksiness which briefly and jarringly intruded upon the third act. The shame of unmarried motherhood persisted long into the second half of the twentieth-century, although I wondered whether Eastern Europe – Czechoslovakia, I presume – was really the best location. The stifling conformism of Western post-war petit bourgeois society, the paradaisical 1950s so beloved of the Daily Mail and ‘conservative social commentators’ – try as I might, I cannot quite bring myself to provide a link to the humourless bigotry of Melanie Phillips – might have been a better target, although perhaps that would have been considered a shift too far. At any rate, the period might have given hypocritical moralisers de nos jours a well-needed jolt.(Feel free to substitute something more appropriate for ‘jolt’.) The morality of the mob was frighteningly conveyed, both visually and chorally, in the final act, all the more so when one knew how ‘fun-loving’ it had previously seemed. Such a gentle age...

Musically, things were better still. I am not sure that I have ever heard the ENO orchestra on better form. This might have been a top-flight international orchestra, boasting considerable depth of tone and dramatic versatility. Special mention should go to leader, Janice Graham, whose crucial solos were well-nigh perfect, reminding us of at least the hope, however distant it might seem, of redemption. Clearly the orchestra was inspired, as it should have been, by the musical direction of Eivind Gullberg Jensen, who would in no sense be embarrassed by comparison with Bernard Haitink or Sir Charles Mackerras. Ever-responsive to the shifting demands of the score, there was true harshness, though never of the easily applied variety, to Jensen’s reading. The more Romantic passages were never unambiguously so, with the possible exception of the conclusion – although here, given what had happened, one could hardly forget. There was not one occasion on which I thought a transition hurried or a tempo-choice questionable. Orchestral balances, the opening brass excepted, were expertly handled too. This was my first encounter with Jensen’s work; I trust that it will not be my last.

Jenůfa really seems to be Amanda Roocroft’s role. Dramatically credible, infinitely touching, almost invariably secure of tone, I could hardly believe this was the same singer I had seen a few years ago as Tatiana at Covent Garden. Where sometimes the Kostelnička might cast her daughter-in-law into the dramatic shadows, one never forgot here that the opera bears the name of its true heroine. Only if it is understood thus does the opera offer any true hope at all. That said, Michaela Martens was simply stunning as the Kostelnička. Less forbidding than one might expect, this was a compassionate woman throughout, driven by appalling circumstances to infanticide. Whatever the horrors of her deed, one never ceased to empathise with her predicament. The guilt it had imposed upon her by the beginning of the third act was almost overwhelming, even when one looked at her, let alone heard her. Susan Gorton offered a nicely observed grandmother, whilst Mairéad Buicke was a splendidly ghastly Karolka. Števa got what he deserved there. In that role, Tom Randle gave an all-encompassing performance. His stage and vocal alcohol-enhanced bravado in the first act prepared the way with utter credibility for the squirming weakling of the third. One could understand why all the girls wanted him – and not just for his money – but equally one could feel relieved that Jenůfa found Laca instead. Robert Brubaker’s portrayal of Laca was equally fine, movingly alert both to his essential simplicity and the somewhat paradoxical attendant complexities of his reactions. His journey from lovestruck petulance to true nobility of spirit was powerfully conveyed.

This performance’s signal achievement was that not a single member of the audience could have been left in any doubt as to Jenůfa’s status as one of the greatest operas of the twentieth century. I do not know whether this were intentional, but I was sometimes moved to think of Janáček as a successor to Mussorgsky in terms of unsparing operatic realism. One cannot say much better than that.