Replacing the originally scheduled Vladimir Jurowski, the conductor Henrik Nánási draws a fine performance even if he is a little stolid in places, tending toward the lush rather than grainy, sinewy Janáček but there is of course no one way of approaching this music.īoth conductor and director thaw somewhat by Act 3, and it is here that Guth’s mix of magic realism and symbolism find their equilibrium. Just as the singer-unfriendly design may mitigate against the hoped-for intensity, the splendidly surging orchestra is sometimes allowed (especially in Act 1) to cover the singers. Everyone-production team, conductor, cast-delivers at a high level without fulfilling every expectation. ROH Jenufa Asmik Grigorian, photo Tristram Kentonīut there is no obvious single reason for this Jenufa being a little less searing than anticipated. Within these white-slatted walls the essential intimacy of the opera tends to get lost, especially as Guth seldom brings his singers downstage. Dispensing with the watermill we hear evoked in the opening of the music, there is still the suggestion of a dark (satanic or otherwise) industrial mill, since what at first sight looks like a maternity hospital may indeed be a workhouse producing cradles synchronized potato-peeling is another of the chores assigned to the excellent chorus.
But it also exudes (at least in the first two acts) an emotional chilliness that begins perhaps in the yawning chasm of Michael Levine’s set. It’s also only the third Guth staging to be seen in the UK, following his Frau ohne Schatten at Covent Garden (2014) and Clemenza di Tito at Glyndebourne (2017)-and like both it offers a grown-up European aesthetic not always found in British opera. Opening 20 years to the day since Oliver Tambosi’s previous Royal Opera staging, in which Mattila sang the title role so memorably, this new production by Claus Guth relieved something of a Jenufa drought in the house. Perhaps some were still not exhaling freely, or maybe it was just first-night tentativeness, but for whatever reason this fine performance was moving if hardly transcendent in the way-given how operas don’t come much more shattering than Janáček’s first masterpiece- Jenufa can be. So there was a palpable sense of relief as Jenufa finally opened 18 months on, albeit with some changes of personnel but still with its two biggest stars-Asmik Grigorian and Karita Mattila-on board.
Royal Opera at Covent Garden, September 28Ĭovent Garden had been holding its collective breath since the originally scheduled first night of this new production in March 2020 became one of the first casualties of the pandemic shutdown.
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