The Bavarian State Opera are live-streaming Saturday night's performance of Jenufa from their website, starting at 19:00 CET (6pm UK).
Barbara Frey's 2009 production features Karita Mattila in the title role, together with Stefan Margita and Gabriele Schnaut.
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Jenùfa - ENO, 19 June 2009
Thanks to ENO's generous ticket offer, I took in this last-but-one performance of Jenùfa for just £20, my bottom nestled in the unaccustomed luxury of a side stalls seat. With armrests! And legroom! The offer seems to have worked its magic - stalls and balcony (£5) were packed. Evidence that ENO really need to rethink their regular pricing, which sees front and centre seats selling like hot cakes however dire the production. Charging a bit more for these choice seats and a bit less for the others might help more cash-strapped punters to find their way to the Coliseum.
David Alden switches Jenùfa from a nineteenth century Moravian village to a grungy Eastern Bloc setting, popping in a few anachronistic details like a gleaming British motorbike. Like any update, it brings us closer to a world we can understand. But more importantly here, it makes it clear that the Kostelnička's crime is rooted in something more personal than the shame of a child born out of wedlock. This is an open-minded society where a couple of good-time girls (in nineties minis and crop tops) can mingle with the regular villagers. What drives the Kostelnička to infanticide here is not just social disapprobation, but the fear of divine judgement, honed by her own sad history. Her religious convictions border on the manic, underlined by an obsession with prayer and god-shop knick-knacks.
Michaela Martens, in a classic piece of only-in-teh-opera casting, was probably the youngest person on stage, so her singing was fresher and less matronly than the Kostelničkas we usually hear. Though formidable, she's a less domineering presence too.
So the story inevitably focuses on Jenùfa herself. Her painful decline through rejection, disfigurement and betrayal was unerringly charted by Amanda Roocroft. Her singing may not be technically flawless, but dramatically her performance was utterly and heartbreakingly convincing. As the walls of the set brilliantly split asunder when the the Kostelnička's shocking crime is exposed, so Roocroft made us understand that Jenùfa's inner world is breaking apart.
The cast were directed with an attention to detail that means that every single character rings true, and not just while they're singing. Tom Randle's Števa may be vain and cowardly, but we can also see the fun-loving charm that attracts Jenùfa to him. Similarly, Robert Brubaker's first act Laca is an irritating oaf who thoroughly justifies Jenùfa's rejection - only at her lowest point does his steadfastness and sincerity show through.
Alden's only failing is his weakness for misplaced humour. Janáček's tale of infanticide and betrayal is fatally short on natural laughs. But superimposing a joke or two doesn't improve it. The Grandmother was beautifully played by Susan Gorton, but why does she need to be got up as a tubby Rosa Klebb? Similarly the Mayor and his wife - straight out of some DDR musical comedy - raised quite inappropriate giggles simply by walking on stage.
Musically, Eivind Gullberg Jensen's ENO debut was a total triumph. The orchestra sounded wonderful, possibly the best I've ever heard them. There was an inevitability to the tempos that made everything flow naturally, and Jensen made the difficult job of balancing solo voices against Janáček's dense orchestrations seem a piece of cake. Never once were singers overwhelmed. The chorus lost their way here and there. Like their fuzzy diction, it provided further evidence of a gradual slide in standards over the last couple of years.
ENO are increasingly supplanting hard-sell treasures like this and the recent Partenope with seat-filling tosh. It's a trend in desperate need of reversal, and one that a further prompt revival of this production would address.
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ENO are offering tickets for their forthcoming Jenufa at superlow prices - side stalls £20, dress circle £10 and balcony £5.
Online purchase only - go to this page and follow the instructions.
And they'll even give you your money back if you don't like it!
David Alden's production, which premiered a couple of years ago, is intelligent and innovative. I'm not familiar with the conductor, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, but the cast, which includes Amanda Roocroft and Tom Randle, sounds fairly reliable.
If you're not familiar with the Coliseum's seating, the balcony is only for people with teeny bottoms and short legs. Some of the dress circle seats have a reduced view of the top of the stage, so the side stalls are the best pick if you can spring for the £20.
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Jenůfa - Opera Holland Park, 15 June 2007
The most distraction you normally have to deal with at an opera house is coughing, and maybe the odd mobile phone. Tonight we had low flying jets, a randy peacock mewing away, the cheers of a victorious cricket team, and to top it all, a helicopter so loud it nearly drowned out the orchestra. That's outdoor opera for you.
Although Holland Park Opera has had a swanky refurb this season, it's really still just a canopy over a seating terrace with a makeshift stage in front. The wind whistles in through the open sides, and the setting sun dazzles before it sinks behind the trees.
But the atmosphere is so mellow these interruptions never really obtrude. The breeze brings in the scent of the herbs which grow beneath the potted olive trees around the auditorium. All of the comfy seats have plenty of legroom and a good view, and the fresh air keeps everyone awake. And whoever decided that drinks and food could be brought in deserves a medal.
This Jenůfa had some great reviews on its opening last week, and on tonight's hearing it deserves all of them. Janáček’s sometimes thoughtlessly brash orchestration can be hard for singers to lift themselves above, and the venue's bizarre acoustical properties can't have helped, but these obstacles were brushed aside by fine performances all round.
Anne Sophie Duprels in the title role anchored the drama and effortlessly negotiated every vocal corner, holding her own musically against the equally superb Kostelnička of Anne Mason. Tom Randle's Laca impressed too, as did Nuala Willis's Grandmother - not the most attractive sound, but entirely right for the role. What surprised me most was the almost uniformly high quality of the minor performances, Karolka, the Mayor and his wife particularly - something you really don't expect outside Covent Garden.
The conductor Stuart Stratford pulled an amazing full-throttle performance from the orchestra. The pace was kept high, and there wasn't a moment they flagged. The climactic final scenes had a terrific energy and drive. The lack of a pit here is a circumstance driven by necessity, but it coincidentally makes the instrumental sound so much more alive.
Janáček’s tightly constructed drama and clearly delineated characters don't require extensive chin-stroking interpretation, and director Olivia Fuchs wisely did without any extraneous cleverness, going for the simple direct approach, a plain low walled set fronting the crumbling stucco pillars of Holland House . On a practical note, the third act room set was too small, bunching up the characters when they needed room to breathe and leaving a huge swathe of empty stage, but otherwise it worked pretty well.
It was a shame that there were quite a few empty seats tonight - Holland Park is bargainaceously cheap by mainstream opera standards and this is really as fine a production as you could hope to see.
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