Corinne Winters in the title role gives a heroic performance shot through with indelible pathos
No opera composer has ever rivalled Leos Janacek in his ability to put colloquial language on the musical stage.
“I secretly listened to the speech of passers-by,” this Moravian composer wrote of the emergence of his score for Jenufa. “I read their facial expressions, I greedily sought to capture every vibration of the voice… a reflection of which I sensed in the notated word-melody. How many melodic variations of a single word I found!”
The operatic result was a breathlessly dramatic sound-world of exquisitely expressed pain and searing beauty, as his protagonist hopelessly struggled to escape her imprisonment under the patriarchal rules of a 19th-century Moravian village.
Janacek took a messy true-to-life story (which still resonates today) and presented it with geometrical clarity. Steva, a dissolute young mill-owner whom all the girls fancy, two-times his fiancée Jenufa; his half-brother Laca also loves her, and her foster-mother, known as the Kostelnicka (a village church warden), wants to protect her from the effects of Steva’s drunkenness.
But Jenufa is expecting Steva’s child, and is desperate to avert scandal by marrying him: his refusal to do so triggers the tragedy. Her mother forces her to give birth in secret, and, to protect her daughter’s reputation, gives her a sleeping drug and murders the child. But she doesn’t properly hide the body, which surfaces in the river next spring, when the winter ice melts…
Claus Guth’s brilliant production – sung in Czech and designed by Michael Levine – won an Olivier Award on its first outing four years ago, and it’s back in great form. Apart from a few rather pointless touches of surrealism, it’s austere in a way that chimes with the music’s passionate simplicity, and the casting for the four central roles couldn’t be bettered.
Thomas Atkins (as Steva) and Nicky Spence (as Laca) may both be tenors, but that is absolutely all they have in common. This Steva is a Jack-the-Lad who refuses to grow up, while Spence’s Laca is a generous-hearted klutz to whom everyone warms instinctively.
Many of us remember the fine Jenufa which the great Finnish soprano Karita Mattila made 20 years ago; now she has gracefully aged-up to make a profoundly moving Kostelnicka. Meanwhile, the title role is taken by the American soprano Corinne Winters, in a heroic performance shot through with indelible pathos.
It was nicely appropriate that one of the ovations on first night should be for conductor Jakub Hrusa, who was making his maiden appearance as the new music director of the Royal Opera House. He sculpts his sound with the fastidiousness of a master, and he also just happens to be a Czech. An unforgettable evening.
To 1 February, Royal Opera House, London (rbo.org.uk)
