The story
Another claustrophobic family in a claustrophobic village, and another opera about women - strong, scary women and vulnerable, soft, helpless women - and their narratives. And a few men who aren't much use. And a river.
This is a simpler story than Jenůfa's, and Janáček's music has grown to its height of storytelling. The women are Kabanicha, matriarch of the Kabanov family and Káťa, the young wife of her son. The men are Tichon, the cowering son and outsider Boris, the all too free arrival. Here they are introduced by the singers playing the roles at Grange Park this year.
So what is special about this opera, that made it erupt onto opera stages nearly half a century after its premiere in Brno 1921? The Guardian tries for answers here.
There is no doubting that Katya was a work of love; Janáček himself claimed that the composition of the opera had flowed like “the beautiful river Volga”... He captures Katya’s fragility, most harrowingly in the moment of reverie just before her fatal plunge into the Volga, and her potential for exultant joy, communicated most memorably in her description of her reactions in church where she imagines angels flying through the haze of incense to heaven. As important in securing our sympathy for her, however, is the chilling contrast between the petty concerns of the bourgeois town in which she finds herself and her own volatile, passionate nature... Throughout the opera he employs great economy of means, from the brooding opening of the prelude to the dizzyingly rapid close in which Katya’s body is brought up from the river as the Kabanicha, bowing graciously to the horrified crowd utters the concluding words of the opera: “Thank you, good people, for your attention.” ... The inescapable feeling left is not just the palpable hopelessness of the male characters, but of the dominating presence of the women: at one extreme, the unchallengeable almost monochrome monstrosity of Kabanicha balanced by Katya’s fragility, volatility and overwhelming desire for love. Katya Kabanova has become a welcome part of the repertoire – inspiring as well as frightening, but most of all, challenging our assumptions and prejudices.
Love, joy, bliss, passion, fragility and domination - and a battle between darkness and light.
As this reviewer commented, the ENO production, like many in these years of revival, set darkness against light, as does the music. "It's amazing how much you can tell of what lies ahead from the way a conductor handles a master composer's first chord. Katya Kabanova's opening sigh of muted violas and cellos underpinned by double basses should tell us that the Volga into which the self-persecuted heroine will eventually throw herself is a river, real or metaphorical, of infinite breadth and depth."
Glyndebourne posted this excellent introduction to the opera in 2021, when Damiano Michieletto directed their performance. As tenor Nicky Spence puts it in that video, this is opera theatre - 'it could be Coronation Street set to music'. (But it's music unlikely to accompany a soap.)
The music
'It was almost as though he was waiting for the twentieth century to happen, for him to be able to really express the emotions and the musical language these emotions needed.' Max Wigglesworth reflects on the music of Janáček'. Born before Traviata (Verdi), the composer died after Wozzeck (Berg). "He kind of rode that wave of direct communication with an audience."
So expect speech melodies: remember his simple statement: 'Speech melodies are the reflections of all life." And expect music carrying conversation, the sounds of fear, crowd anger and conflict. But expect too the music of love and longing, and of nature, and the lyrical sounds of that river. Here's the opera's overture, in rehearsal for the Opera North production: 'The elemental power of nature depicted by an orchestra.' Listen here to the final scene at the river (left and below).
Janáček wrote that when he was composing Katya Kabanova ‘‘The work flowed from my pen just like the beautiful river Volga. Should I now catch the waves? Impossible. The motifs are transformed as if by themselves. It seems to me that even when a motif rises up threateningly, it has its germ in the still, dreaming waters." Read this splendid essay in the program for the London Philharmonic concert under Simon Rattle. For a brief celebration of the music, check out this Guardian review of the concert recording.
Act II celebrates love in an unusual double duet. Káťa and Boris fall in love with their music crossing the meeting of her sister, Varvara and her schoolmaster Kudrjaš. "The lyrical folk music of the younger couple contrasts with the laden tension between the title character and her lover. The atmosphere is charged with emotion: possibility, tenderness and desire colliding with a powerful sense of threat." More here from Glyndebourne.
Our production
We're listening to a production without an orchestra. That's a challenge, since so much of the discussion of Janacek's impact is about orchestration. (Here's an example - reviewing Wigglesworth's handling of the score at ENO.) It's a very different view of any opera, and particularly of an opera whose composer used the full range of orchestras and whose productions usually star leading operatic singers.
This is a workshop with young lyrical artists.
Before our session starts, you can dip into the production if you wish. The video is here. Details here. 'Filmed in the baroque decor of Les Bouffes du Nord in Paris, with a reduced piano version, incredibly talented young singers, this is an enchanted version, acclaimed both by the press and public.'
In full?
The Glyndebourne production from 1988 is on YouTube, but without surtitles. Arguably, you don't need them: it's extraordinary how the music tells what they are singing.
Here's Act I.
The music is splendidly conducted by Andrew Davis leading the London Philharmonic. Nancy Gustafson is Katya (above), Ryland Davies is Tichon, and Felicity Palmer the terrifying mother in law, while Barry McCauley is Boris.
Lyn, 20.11.24
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