SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Leos Janacek, Jenufa:   Soloists, chorus and orchestra of the Opéra de Toulon Provence Méditerranée, production from the Opéra National de Lorraine, France. 24. 2.2008 (MM)

Janacek's Jenufa is built on a short story, Her Foster Daughter by Czech novelist Gabriela Preissova, a brief episode in the life of a young girl struggling with her life in a timeless rural society. Janacek amplified the elements of the story into opera, fusing its stark eastern European naturalism with Russian fatalism, interweaving the comfort and cruelty of its human world with the beauty and harshness of its physical world. Within the close confines of this larger world personal and social conflicts erupt, and are resolved with simplistic brutality. Yet in Janacek's Jenufa there is redemption, redemption belonging to the purest Romantic ideal of love. Unlike the musical Romantics Janacek tells his story not in larger, sweeping musical and dramatic idealistic terms, but in the smallest and most precise details of the gamut of emotions that interplay between simple human psyches. And finally the miracle of Janacek's musical story-telling is the gigantic proportion of its redemptive resolution.

Quite an undertaking for the Toulon Opera which already this season has had real difficulty dealing with the comparative simplicities of Gluck and Gounod  - well, Gluck said he wanted to be simple, and everyone says Gounod is simple  Maybe these gentlemen are really quite a bit more difficult than they seem, given that Toulon succeeded fairly well in dealing with the formidable challenges of Janacek's opera, but failed completely to meet those in Orphée et Eurydice or  Romeo et Juliet.

Toulon assembled a cast that brought Janacek's countryside characters to vivid life.  Czech soprano Helena Kaupova embodied Jenufa with a sizable sweetly lyric, young voice and a peasant presence in the flush of youth, at once passive and stalwart.  Austrian tenor Peter Svensson embodied Laça in a big, almost beautiful voice, with a not-too-bright presence that was sly, passive and brutish. Canadian tenor James McLean portrayed Steva, spoiled because of his boyish cuteness, who had learned long ago how to escape from his deeper feelings. American soprano Nadine Segunde brought rigidity, blind stupidity and dignity to Jenufa's foster mother, the Kostelnicha, in strongly voiced scenes that were indeed effective though never quite hitting this character's delicate humanness.

The production was by Jean-Louis Martinelli, whose origins in straight theater were clearly apparent in this, his only attempt to stage opera. The production was also warmed over, having had its original performances at the Opéra de Nancy in 2002. In Toulon the production was restaged by Ruth Orthmann in second hand direction that perhaps exacerbated the naiveté of blocking, and the patently obvious staging solutions that betrayed the emotional complexities of Janacek's storytelling.

Rare is the production that can assimilate the multitude of social, natural and personal tensions that make up Janacek's opera. Mr. Martinelli eschewed the natural world and its ironic insertions into human lives, the warm light of fall reduced to a pile of potatoes on a completely white stage, and the excitement of the emerging colors of spring indicated by a single bouquet of flowers. The frigid stillness of winter was ignored as Steva stood in an open doorway to deliver a good part of his second act scene with the Kostelnicka. The social world that in fact imposes the tragedy of this infanticide was reduced to a small chorus unable initially to generate a spontaneous social energy or finally, lined up against a colorless spring sky, to project this world's sympathetic morality.

This left Toulon's fine cast on its own ( although certainly with some help from the stage director) to create Janacek's drama. Besides the four principals the Grandmother Buryja of Zlatomira Nikolova effectively grounded the family drama, as the mayor, rendered by Jean-Marie Frémeau, grounded the social drama. The smaller roles, the frivolous Karolka of Olivia Doray, the lively Jano of Anna Kasyan, et al were sensitively cast. All this with a formidable orchestral underpinning led by conductor Friedrich Pleyer who very effectively delved into the details and subtleties of Janacek's score at the expense of realizing its hysteria or fully capturing its grander emotional sweep - not a bad trade off if there has to be one.

Janacek's Jenufa builds to a huge denouement, the Kostelnicha's crime recognized, Jenufa's nearly incomprehensible humanity extended. Love itself exudes from Laca and finally Jenufa in overpowering orchestral and vocal outpourings. For this sublime moment Mr. Martinelli placed his lovers on a high platform upstage mostly hidden behind a scrim that depicted a primitive, gold painted Madonna and Child. Perhaps there are gulags somewhere in the antarctic to send musically insensitive stage directors for re-education.

Michael Milenski


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