Fairytales often speak directly to our unconscious, revealing drives and truths that are not always apparent to our conscious selves. It is therefore not surprising that many tales are replicated across countries and cultures, even if the characters and details vary. The Slavic fable of Rusalka, for example, has counterparts with the French Melusine, Germanic Nixie and numerous others, including, most famously, Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid.” Although Rusalka is a simple story of a water nymph who relinquishes the power of speech so that she can become human to be with a prince with whom she has fallen in love, her motivations lie deep within the unconscious, taking in sexual awakening, resentment and a desire to return to an innocent state, and it was these aspects of the narrative that the director, David Radok, wished to explore.

A Journey Into the Unconscious

Although it is not a unique nor a particularly profound reading, Radok’s presentation, for which he also designed the scenery, was hugely successful. Not only did he capture the full dramatic and emotional dimensions of the work, but his ability to convey the drama within the context of Rusalka’s unconscious motivations was expertly rendered and allowed the audience to fully engage with his interpretation.

Act one opened to a stage that blended a large room in a house with windows and doors in a watery blue-grey colour with wooden walkways and reeds as would be found in a marshy area, and that stretched from inside the room to the outside world. This was Rusalka’s world; it was secure and safe, in which the walls represented the borders between the known and unknown, between innocence and knowledge. Rusalka, like many a teenager, was desperate to open the doors, to leave the secure and safe world behind, and to explore what else exists; the prince provided the impetus that awakened her sexual desires and thus set her on the path. Unfortunately, that door opens in only one direction; innocence is not something that can ever be regained.

Act two takes her into a world of luxury and frivolity, of betrayal and lust. It is a complex world of suffering, illusion and disappointment. Radok’s staging was brilliantly conceived to create the impression of wealth through chandeliers and the façade of a mansion and an outdoor area dedicated to dancing. He also ensured that Rusalka’s disillusionment was clearly portrayed through her detached meanderings between the dancers and attempts to find a way out through the dense undergrowth that surrounded the dancing area.

Act three finds her back in her original room, but everything has changed. The roof is leaking, and the plants are dying; everything looks to be in a state of decay. No longer human, but neither a nymph, she allows her resentment for the outside world to grow and retreats into her watery world, shuts the doors, and closes the shutters on the windows, but it is not innocence that she finds, only isolation.

It was a reading that fitted sympathetically with the surface fairytale narrative, with each complementing the other to provide a layered and satisfying staging. Radok also ensured that the visual presentation was sensitively developed to draw out the dramatic significance of the events and to manage the tensions. The costume designer, Zuzana Ježková, created a series of costumes that set the characters in the Victorian period, detailed to reflect the characters’ natures. The Water Goblin appeared slimy and unkempt in old blue and grey coloured garments, while the three wood sprites were in greeny blue, light shifts. Jezibaba’s blue and grey costume gave her the appearance of a matron or nanny figure. All appeared as if water was their natural habitat. The Prince and Princess, on the other hand, definitely came from the civilized human world and were dressed as wealthy Victorians of high status. It was the costumes of the chorus for the ballroom scene that really stood out. They were all attired in black with top hats, including the women, which gave them a sinister appearance; they were certainly not benign, nor did they act in a manner sympathetic towards Rusalka. The two worlds, the human and nonhuman, were visually clearly divided. Rusalka’s changing costumes reflected her movement between the two worlds but always in a way that ensured she appeared different from those around her.

Ivanović Oversees a Musically Engaging Performance

It was also a reading that complemented the score perfectly, which the conductor Marko Ivanović sensitively brought to life with the Janáček Opera of the National Theatre Brno. The pace and dynamic contrasts were carefully judged to support the onstage drama, if on occasions slightly understated, while the dance episodes were lively and graceful. It was also a reading that caught the beauty of the score.

Soprano Jana Šrejma Kačírková produced an emotionally compelling performance in the role of Rusalka. As the young and innocent water nymph, she was headstrong, rebellious, and yearning for love that she convincingly captured with a vocally expressive presentation, which she convincingly transformed into an insecure, bewildered and downtrodden young woman, before finally returning to the watery depths, hollowed out by her experience with humans.

Kačírková possesses a secure, resonant voice, which she uses with considerable skill to present emotional states, in which her pleading with her father and then with Jezibaba were particularly well developed as she coated her voice with longing and desire overlaid with an insistent determination to get her own way. There is also a pleasing energy in the voice so that even when singing in a more subdued manner, you could sense a restless spirit ready to explode at any minute. Her ability to move the voice freely enabled her to capture Rusalka’s disoriented state in acts two and three as she moved her voice flexibly across the range, with neatly placed accents and dynamic contrasts that expertly caught her pain and grief. It was, therefore, slightly disappointing that her rendition of the showpiece aria, “Song of the Moon,” did not really take flight; it was pleasant enough, and she allowed her emotions to strengthen as the aria progressed, but overall, it was too understated to convince.

Tenor Peter Berger made an excellent impression as the Prince, whom he played as a weak-willed and frivolous character, totally at the mercy of his fast-changing passions. Even as an old man, when he returns to Rusalka, full of remorse, to ask her forgiveness, he readily accepts her kiss that he knows will kill him. It appeared as the easy way out rather than an expression of deep love, despite his passionate pleading. Vocally, it was a role that seemed to suit him almost perfectly. He possesses a voice with a passionate, sweet-sounding tone that moves securely and with agility across the range, allowing for a lyrically strong performance, which he delivered with confidence and emotional force.

Vodnik, the water goblin, was given an engaging yet not wholly sympathetic reading by bass Jan Štáva. He was suitably anxious about and supportive of his daughter Rusalka but was abusive and sexually aggressive towards the wood spirits. His singing had a determined, even fierce, quality that gave him an imposing demeanour. Although certainly not lacking in beauty, his crafting of the vocal line was focused on promoting the meaning of the text, which he furnished with emotional honesty.

Soprano Eliška Gattringerová was thoroughly dislikable as the Foreign Princess. She was cynical, vicious and served only her own interests. Her voice had a harsh, strident edge, which she used forcefully and energetically to assert her will over both the Prince and Rusalka, whom she treated as an inferior.

Mezzo-soprano Václava Krejčí portrayed the witch, Jezibaba, as hard, unforgiving and cold, and treated Rusalka with total contempt. She possesses an agile, secure voice over which she exhibits excellent control, which she used to create a compelling vocal portrayal that captured her vicious and opportunistic nature. Her forceful response to Rusalka’s pleading in Act three was expertly rendered as she spat out her lines full of bile, which also showed off its nuanced colouring.

No attempt was made by Radok to hide the fact that the three wood spirits were based on Wagner’s Rheinmaidens; if anything, it appeared he wished to draw attention to the fact. With their greeny-blue costumes that evoked connections with the watery depths and their playfully cruel taunting of the Water Goblin, one could so easily have mistaken it for the opening scene of “Das Rheingold.” Played by soprano Doubravka Novotná, and contraltos Ivana Pavlu and Monika Jägerová, they acted their parts as a group, yet each managed to maintain an individual identity.

Baritone Tadeáš Hoza gave a solid performance as the Hunter.

The choir of the Janáček Opera of the National Theatre, under the direction of Pavel Koñárek, produced an energetic and beautifully sung performance, played out the dance routines wonderfully, and acted out their Act two roles convincingly to create an oppressive, even threatening presence.

Overall, it was a high-quality presentation, for which Radok must take a large share of the credit. It was an imaginative and dramatically convincing reading, which in no way is meant to belittle the contribution made by the orchestra or the singers, who all gave strong performances and made it the most successful of the four operas I reviewed at this year’s festival.

The post Janáček Brno Festival 2024 Review: Rusalka appeared first on OperaWire.

“Every stage work takes on new meanings with each new interpretation.” So reads the opening line of the program notes by dramaturg Marta Ljubková, writing about Janáček Brno Festival’s production of “Jenůfa.” She was being somewhat disingenuous. What was presented was not a change in emphasis or an exploration of hidden themes; rather, it was a heavy-handed intervention that included a new ending, new text, and, unbelievably, new music, provided by the band VIAH, a pop duo on electric keyboards, who pumped out a sound that was totally at odds with Janáček’s music.

Loulova’s Provocative Direction

As the audience filed into the auditorium for the beginning of the performance, it was met with an image of artist Jamie McCartney’s “The Great Wall of Vulva,” consisting of 20 casts of female genitalia. The original work consists of 400 vulvas; its aim is to “shed light on variety, diversity and the absence of a norm” and to draw attention to the pressures women are put under to have aesthetic plastic surgery. It was the opening salvo of a production, directed by Veronika Kos Loulová, that reinterpreted “Jenůfa” from a woman’s perspective in the 21st century, focused on the psychological difficulties experienced by women during childbirth and the early stages of motherhood.

Without a doubt, it is an interpretation with potential. Jenůfa has been placed in a high-stress situation, the subject of male violence and irresponsibility at the hands of Laca and Števa. She is pregnant, and the father, Števa, has abandoned her, and she is now fearful of the judgement that will be passed by the village community for having an illegitimate baby. She lives alone with Kostelnička, her stepmother, and the two try desperately to cope, not just with caring for the newborn baby but also having to keep it secret from a close-knit community. Little surprise, therefore, that Jenůfa falls into a pit of despair, aggravating any predisposition for postpartum depression, a condition that can also affect surrogates, such as the Kostelnička, who finds herself looking after both Jenůfa and the baby.

It started well. Loulová moved the drama to a contemporary setting, for which the scenographer and costume designer, Irina Moscu, created a cluttered modern-day apartment, where Jenůfa and the Kostelnička lived. The grandmother busied herself with household chores, while Stárek, the mill foreman, and obviously a regular visitor, sat comfortably reading a newspaper at the table and seemed very much at home. Laca had free rein of the house and moved around as if he lived there and did what he liked, as did Števa. The relationships were thus clearly established as close-knit, suffocating and overbearing, which Loulová amplified by accentuating the negative characteristics of the male figures, especially those of Laca and Števa. Laca, in particular, expressed no sign of love towards Jenůfa; rather, he was boorish, crude and cruel, always flashing his knife in front of her, sometimes with her panties twirling on its blade.

By the end of the first act, Loulová had successfully created an oppressive, threatening atmosphere based on intolerance and violence and clearly established Jenůfa’s vulnerability. There were, however, numerous irritations in her presentation, not least the interpolation of amplified texts of reviews from Preissova’s original stage play on which “Jenůfa” was based and quotations from members of ‘A Mother’s Smile,’ a group set up to care for women who have experienced psychological difficulties during pregnancy. They added nothing at all to the drama and brought the momentum to a complete stop. Also, the removal of all folk elements, while understandable given its contemporary setting, undermined the sense of community and therefore the outside pressures exerted on Jenůfa and the Kostelnička. The folk dances, therefore, also had to be jettisoned, which were replaced by an uncoordinated free-for-all that looked ugly and minimized the impact of the musical contrasts. There were other minor annoyances, but dramatically it worked fairly well.

Act two progressed in a similar vein. The characters were sensitively handled and successfully presented, capturing both Jenůfa’s and the Kostelnička’s emotional and psychological deterioration under the stresses of the situation. While the Kostelnička’s anxieties and emotions became more haphazard, Jenůfa looked oblivious to what was happening around her; she looked hollow and exhausted, clearly overwhelmed and unable to cope. Although it was a well-presented act, it was again subject to distracting interventions, this time with an amplified voice listing issues and products relating to new mothers, such as nipple cream.

Act three took the staging in a different direction. The apartment was melded with a wooded glade, into what appeared to be a dreamscape, with its meaning open to interpretation. Was it a projection of Jenůfa’s or the Kostelnička’s mind? Maybe it was a desire for a better world? Could it have been a representation of the heaven in which her murdered child now resides? Was it a contrast to the hell of a life lived in the apartment? Or was it something completely different? It did not really matter; it proved to be a successful device for encouraging the audience to think about the implications of such possibilities, and as such it was successful.

Unwelcome Alterations to the Opera

Unfortunately, the final duet between Laca and Jenůfa was cut, so that the opera ended with Jenůfa forgiving the Kostelnička, who was surrounded by other women in a show of solidarity. This went beyond Janáček’s intentions and felt wholly contrived. It also drew attention away from the legitimate portrayal of Jenůfa, the Kostelnička and women in general who suffer from male abuse, neglect or lack of understanding, as well as the problem of postpartum depression, which was supposed to be the main focus of Loulová’s interpretation and instead highlighted the fact that there was not a single male character with even a modicum of decency or empathy for Jenůfa’s or the Kostelnička’s conditions. For all his faults, Laca in the end accepts his responsibilities; this excised from the text as it went against the message. Even Stárek was allowed to sit through Jenůfa’s suffering while being tormented by Laca, just so that he could be shown to be a passive, disinterested male. It verged on propaganda, rather than a nuanced consideration of the problem.

Yet although Loulová’s staging was provocative, at times heavy-handed and occasionally irritating, her sure directorial grasp enabled her to fashion a reasonably successful interpretation in which her determination to insert her concerns about postpartum depression was made alongside, although not always within, what was a well-crafted drama. It was, therefore, a pity that she threw it all away by replacing the final duet with a nondescript piece of music by VIAH. It destroyed the effect that she had struggled to create, so that one left the theatre with a wholly negative impression.

A Raw, Exciting Orchestral Reading

The relatively small orchestral force of the Moravian Theatre under the baton of Anna Novotná Pešková created a dramatically stark and compelling reading. Its lean, transparent textures, in which the percussion often thrust itself into the foreground, gave the sound a rawness that sat well with Loulová’s staging, which was accentuated by the lack of warmth from the relatively small string section. Pešková was always sensitive to the drama’s twists and turns, complementing them with pleasing dynamic contrasts and changes in pace, and the melodies were crisply and deftly executed.

The star of the show was undoubtedly soprano Eliška Gattringerová, who essayed the role of the Kostelnička, although it was not the usual portrayal one might have expected. In line with Loulová’s interpretation, she became a sympathetic character, rather than a hard-headed matriarch, equally concerned about her own reputation as that of Jenůfa’s. Such was her success in presenting the Kostelnička as a well-intentioned, fundamentally decent woman who was unable to deal with the situation that it appeared completely natural that she should be forgiven by Jenůfa for the murder of her baby. Her singing performance was also wonderfully expressive, in which she captured the anxieties, stresses and fears that led the Kostelnička into committing such a horrendous crime.

Jenůfa was played by mezzo-soprano Barbora Perná, who produced an excellent acting performance that captured her mental state perfectly along with all its emotional contradictions. In Act one, she accepted and rebelled against Laca’s aggression, displayed her love for the unworthy Števa, and her contempt for Laca. In Act two, she had collapsed into an exhausted shell of herself. Yet underlying it all, she exuded a sense of decency and love. Her vocal performance was solid rather than exciting or revealing. Her singing was clear and articulate, and she expressed herself forcefully and passionately, but she lacked the frisson, the ability to add nuance and push the voice to the extremes that is necessary to dominate the role.

Tenor Josef Moravec was essentially only required to portray Laca’s negative characteristics and to steer clear of anything that might put him in a positive light, and he did it very well; he was frustrated, angry and resentful and simmered with a violence that was ready to explode. Possessing a resonant voice, which at times he could have used with more dynamic subtlety, he was able to intimidate Jenůfa and dominate a scene, as he forcefully pushed his voice into a confrontation.

Tenor Raman Hasymau has an agile voice with a pleasing timbre, although it can sound a little thin in the upper register, which he used impressively to capture Števa’s superficial character. Yes, he was pushed into emotionally uncomfortable situations, but he always managed to coat his voice with a veneer of insincerity or immaturity, which fitted perfectly with the tenor of the production.

Mezzo-soprano Sylva Čmugrová gave a clearly defined portrait of Grandmother Buryjovka, making it quite clear that she had no interest in Laca whatsoever.

Bass Jiri Pribyl had only the occasional line to sing as Stárek but was present for a large part of the first act, in which he successfully ignored Laca’s brutish behavior as if it were completely normal.

Sopranos Katerina Popová and Anna Moriová were parted as Karolka and Barena, respectively. Both delivered well-sung performances in what were small roles.

Final Thoughts

Personally, I found Loulová’s interpretation to be far too heavy-handed to consider it a success. Lecturing or berating audiences is never a good thing; they are quite capable of understanding a well-managed interpretation without having it spelt out in bold terms or using gimmicks, like having a pop duo bring the opera to a conclusion. It comes across as extremely patronising.

Actually, I had no problem with Loulová’s overall reading of the piece; in fact, I found it insightful. There is a very good “Jenůfa” contained within this production, but it is struggling to get out; a more nuanced approach is needed, one shorn of the extraneous additions that undermined all that is good about it.

It is co-produced with the Moravian Theatre Olomouc.

The post Janáček Brno Festival 2024 Review: Jenůfa appeared first on OperaWire.

This weekend is filled with new productions, season openings, role debuts and some of operas greatest masterpieces.

Lolita – Prague State Opera, Czech Republic

Rodion Shchedrin’s new opera gets another performance at the Estates Theatre with Pelageya Kurennaya in the title role, as well as Petr Sokolov, Alexander Kravets, Daria Rositskaya, Michaela Zajmi, Ivo Hrachovec, and Eliška Gattringerová.

Sergey Neller conducts the work which was directed by Sláva Daubnerová.

Rusalka – Opéra national du Rhin, France

Pumeza Matshikiza stars in the title role of Dvořák’s most popular work alongside Bryan Register, Attila Jun, Patricia Bardon, and Rebecca Von Lipinski. Antony Hermus conducts the production by Nicola Raab.

Tosca – Teatro Regio di Torino, Italy

Giulio Cesare- Teatro alla Scala, Italy

Danielle de Niese makes her long awaited La Scala debut alongside an accomplished that includes Bejun Mehta, Sara Mingardo, Philippe Jaroussky, Christophe Dumaux, Christian Senn, Renato Dolcini, and Luigi Schifano. Giovanni Antonini conducts the production by Robert Carsen.

Lucia di Lammermoor – Bilbao Opera, Spain

Jessica Pratt makes history singing her 100th Lucia and performing a critical edition in the original key as Donizetti intended. The star soprano is joined by Ismael Jordi, Juan Jesús Rodriguez, and Marko Mimica. Bel Canto specialist Riccardo Frizza conducts the masterwork.

Turandot – Gran Teatre del Liceu, Spain

Iréne Theorin and Lise Lindstrom share the title role in Puccini’s final work. The two sopranos are joined by tenors Jorge de León and Gregory Kunde. Alexander Vinogradov and Ante Jerkunica sing Timur, while Ermonela Jaho and Anita Hartig are Liu. Josep Pons conducts the new production Franc Aleu.

Don Pasquale – Royal Opera House, England

Bryn Terfel and Olga Peretyatko light up Donizetti’s masterwork in a new production by Damiano Michieletto. They are joined by Ioan Hotea and Markus Werba. Evelino Pidò conducts the comic gem.

The post Olga Peretyatko, Jessica Pratt & Anna Pirozzi Headline International Weekend – (10/18-20) appeared first on OperaWire.