Review

A crazily lavish, almost unbearably moving performance of Jenůfa - review

The recklessness of a great artist: Finnish star soprano Karita Mattila, singing the taxing role of Kostelnička
The recklessness of a great artist: Finnish star soprano Karita Mattila, singing the taxing role of Kostelnička Credit: Petr Kadlec

More than a century after it was premiered, Janáček’s great opera Jenůfa still has the power to scald and shock. It plunges us into a rural world of implacable prohibitions and duties, which no appeal to human feelings can mollify.

A baby born out of wedlock can be sacrificed to save social shame; a man will not hesitate to make a woman unmarriageable by disfiguring her face. And as these dreadful things are enacted, one has a sense of village life going on all round, unperturbed. A folk-song will suddenly burst in on a tragic scene, with no warning. But tender feelings somehow manage to flourish amidst all this harshness, like flowers in the crevices of a bleak rock-face.

This tremendous concert performance was equally faithful to the stony, fateful side of the opera, and its human, forgiving side. Dominating it in every way was Finnish star soprano Karita Mattila, her shock of blonde hair in stark contrast with her severe black smock. Fourteen years ago at Covent Garden, she gave a blazing performance as Jenůfa, but here she had the even more taxing role of Kostelnička, the stepmother who takes it upon herself to save Jenůfa from social disgrace by an appalling act.

A crazily lavish performance: soprano Karita Mattila and conductor Jiří Bělohlávek
A crazily lavish performance: soprano Karita Mattila and conductor Jiří Bělohlávek Credit: Petr Kadlec

She threw herself into the role with the recklessness that only a great artist, who no longer cares about reputation and “husbanding the voice”, can manage. She was every inch the iron matriarch at the beginning, scolding Jenůfa’s betrothed Števa for his fecklessness. Later, as she allows herself to think the unthinkable, her whole body became twisted with anxiety and self-torment, and the voice cracked and heavy with remorse.

Mattila was the glowing centre of a performance which seemed crazily lavish. An all-Czech cast had been flown in for the occasion, all of whom were bursting with character. Svatopluk Sem as Steva’s friend Stárek only sang for about three minutes but that was long enough to brand his grainy baritone on our ears.

Ludĕk Vele made a bluffly comic town Mayor, who blunders over the tragedy happening before his very eyes, but which he can’t see. Adriana Kohútková as Jenůfa was an ideal foil for Mattila, tender and confused where Mattila was all iron resolve – though in their great encounter in Act 2 the roles are almost reversed. 

This sense of characters being transformed in the crucible of tragic events was even more powerfully conveyed by Jaroslav Březina as Števa and his petulantly jealous half-brother Laca, played by Aleš Briscein. Števa seemed to shrink, vocally and physically, as his bluster is revealed as completely hollow. Laca on the other hand seemed to grow and grow, so that at the end his decision to marry the disgraced Jenůfa felt plausible – which isn’t always so.

Lending wings to these personal dramas was a feeling of age-old community, and the scent and breeze of a rural setting, wonderfully conveyed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno. These ensembles are Czech in more than name. Most major-league orchestras and ensembles are completely globalised, but if you cast your eye down these lists of names every one is native, and it shows.

The folk-songs of the third act, the tender violin solos that adorn Kostelnička’s great Act 2 confession, the tipsy village-band sound of the wood-winds, all had the ring of authenticity. Conductor Jiří Bĕlohlávek’s tempi at first seemed too spacious, compared to the flaying urgency of many well-known interpreters such as Sir Charles Mackerras. But this made the crazed intensity of the later scenes all the greater, and the wonderful redemptive ending almost unbearably moving.

Hear this performance on the BBC iPlayer via the Radio 3 website: bbc.co.uk/radio3

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