SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Janáček, The Adventures of Mr Brouček: Soloists, Orchestra of Scottish Opera. Conductor: Martin André. Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 16.4.2010 (SRT)

 

Cast:

John Graham-Hall – Mr Brouček

Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts – Mazal/Starry Sky-Blue/Petrik

Jonathan Best – Sacristan/Lunabor/Domsik

Anne-Sophie Duprels – Malinka/Etherea/Kunka

Donald Maxwell – Würfl/Shining Radiance/Town Councillor

Frances McCafferty – Housekeeper/Housekeeper/Kedruta

 

Orchestra of Scottish Opera

Chorus of Opera North

Scottish Opera extra chorus for The Adventures of Mr Brouček

Martin André (conductor)

 

Production:

John Fulljames (director)

Lucy Carter (lighting designer)

Alex Lowde (set and costume designer)

Finn Ross (video designer)


This production is the fruit of a collaboration between Scottish Opera and Opera North (see here for a review of its original incarnation in 2009). It’s good to see British regional companies working together like this: it’s hard to see how this work could have reached the stage otherwise. It’s been said often enough that Brouček is the Janáček opera that is least like a Janáček opera. Realism goes out the window in this surreal take on a drunken man’s imaginary journeys to the moon and the Hussite wars of 15^thcentury Prague. Unfortunately a lot of the rich lyricism we associate with Janáček tends to take a back seat too in a score which is more concerned with painting an atmosphere than sweeping melodies. That’s not to say they’re absent altogether, though: the love music of Act I will resound with anyone who knows Kátya and the comic characterisation of Brouček himself is a motif that crops up again and again. This production comes after a well received recording of the opera by Jiří Bĕlohlávek, but I’m slightly at a loss to explain why it has received more prominence of late. It sticks out like a surreal sore thumb in the composer’s operatic output, and much of the satire that might have chimed with contemporaries is lost on modern audiences.

Happily both companies fielded a cast who get fully inside the music. The central role of Brouček isn’t easy because, unless you’re careful, you can go through the entire opera merely by blustering. John Graham-Hall’s performance didn’t quite avoid this trap, but he wisely played up the humour so that he kept the audience’s sympathy for what is seldom a likeable character. His well rounded tenor stood in neat contrast to the altogether brighter (and stronger) voice of Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts who leant fantastic colour to the love scenes as well as daft-as-a-brush humour to the lunar poetry of Act One. His star is still riding high after his pole-axing Peter Grimes: let’s hope we see a lot more of him north of the border. He was matched by a bright-voiced, sparkling Anne-Sophie Duprels whose coloratura and sheen were just right for the lunar goddess Etherea, as well as the altogether more down to earth lover Malinka. The best all-round comic turn of the night, however, was Donald Maxwell: he played a characterful and full-bodied publican before transforming into a hilarious patron of the arts for the moon scene. His Town Councillor may have had less to do but he carried the dignity of the scene and the role fittingly.

John Fulljames’ production is as eclectic as the alcohol-fuelled trip that Janáček’s story sends us on. Modern day Prague is laid out in minimal but recognizable style, a few street lights together with the illuminated sign for the Vikárka tavern. He embraces the silliness of the moon act and creates characters and scenes dressed all in white, except for Lloyd-Roberts’ bright blue spaceman outfit. Then for the second act in the 1420s the setting is merely suggested through the 15^th century peasant costumes together with weaponry. Video direction is used subtly but effectively to convey, for example, Brouček’s ascent to the surface of the moon or the firing of the barrel he hides in at the end of Act II. The satire which Janáček intended is wisely downplayed in favour of colourful surface realism.

In many ways the finest work was done in the pit. Martin André’s dedicated direction never allowed the attention to flag and the orchestra got fully inside Janáček’s chameleonic score, whether the brightness of the lunar landscape or the altogether darker sonorities of 15^thcentury Prague. Special mention to the oboes who did a most convincing impression of a set of unreliable bagpipes.

A good performance, then, and an opera which I’m glad I had the opportunity to see, but it remains for me an interesting exception in Janáček’s output and one I can’t see myself revisiting often. Give me Moravian realism any day.

 

Simon Thompson