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Showing posts with label Schukoff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Schukoff. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Janacek - Katia Kabanova - Liceu






Kàtia Kabànova → Gran Teatre del Liceu


Janacek, Katia Kabanova, Liceu.  Buy a ticket and see it tomorrow, it’s your last chance!

I know that is not the conventional way to start a review, but after the performance that I saw last night, I am not only going to start by review with that injunction, but also end with it as well!

With a stripped-back, sparse staging comprising intersecting planes enlivened by projection and lighting it becomes a gaunt setting to highlight the singing of what is one of the most complete ensemble productions of an opera that I have seen.

I have come to expect orchestral playing of the very highest order from the Orquestra Simfònica of the Liceu, but last night’s performance conducted by Josep Pons took their playing to another level.  They emphasised that the music for this opera is the equivalent of a concerto for orchestra and the whole band would have been fully justified in taking a bow on stage for the meticulous and nuanced playing that they produced.

The soloists were dazzling with the signal exception of Aleksander Teliga playing the boorish uncle Saviol Prokofievitx Dikoi, wearing an absurd furry coat with top hat and cane and failing to reach the level of professional fullness of his accompanying cast.  Perhaps his cartoonish appearance and stilted acting was intentional as many of the other characters appeared more suited to melodrama or Expressionism than naturalism.

A case in point would be Rosie Aldridge’s chilling portrayal of the domineering mother-figure Marfa Ignatievna Kabanova, presented as a stage villain in tight fitting black bombazine and sung with the sort vicious relish that meant that when she came on stage at the end of the performance to take her well deserved ovation there were boos for the Mother’s character mixed with the enthusiastic applause for her superlative singing and portrayal!  A true accolade! 

Her character had been fleshed out by an interlude with the Saviol character where she showed herself as a hard drinking, straight from the bottle dominatrix, at one point straddling Saviol, threatening him with his own cane and producing gurgles of delight from the prone character as the curtain fell!



In another staging detail, this production chose not to include the iconic moment at the end of the opera where, after the suicide of her daughter-in-law, with the drowned body at her feet, Marfa bows to the workers who had searched for the corpse.  In this production she remains still until her right hand shoots out, demanding the hand of her grieving son, whom she then leads away from his dead wife into the darkness of the wings.  An electric - and truly horrible moment too.
Tikhon, sung by Francisco Vas, as the ineffectual and mother-dominated cypher of a husband, was initially disconcerting because of his resemblance to William Rees-Mogg, another ineffectually destructive character: lean rectitude masking dark forces!  He sung the role with the confused passion exactly matching his confused, damaged character, expertly juggling the contradictory complexities that he is too weak to surmount.

But the evening belonged to Katia, sung by Patricia Racette, who claimed the role for herself singing with the sort of confidence and assurance that allowed her, paradoxically, to portray the self-destructive repression and lethal freedom, the sensitivity, sympathy rejected and half-understood, the full passion and hesitancy with a range of expression that was breath-taking in its scope and effortless delivery.

The recipient of her love, Boris Grigorievitx, nephew to Saviol, sung by Nikolai Schukoff, was presented as a spiv-like, gigolo, Latin lover, smooth, cigarette smoking, spoilt “rich” boy who can’t get his hands on his inheritance, frustrated and bored in a provincial small town – certainly not a man to lose your life over, but superficially attractive – and brilliantly sung and confidently acted.  The attraction between Boris and Katia was convincingly displayed and the scene of the assignation when Katia takes off her coat and reveals that she is wearing an evening dress with butterfly-like gauze ‘wings’ emphasised the incongruity of the match, and perhaps the inevitability of the fatal attraction as she was caught, insect like by her investment of the light of love in Boris.

Vania Kudriaix, the other lover in this opera, sung by Josep-Ramon Olivé, is a contrast to Boris.  Vania is a writer and finds beauty in nature and expresses himself in folk song, you feel that he has more authenticity than Boris will ever have.  Olivé possessed the role and through excellent singing, spirited dancing and a rounded performance made the character appealing and real. 
 
He was matched in singing and acting by his lover Varvara, sung by Michaela Selinger, who portrayed a repressed semi-adolescent at last breaking free from the tyrannical hold of her adopted mother with élan.  These two had some of the most lyrical sung moments in the opera and were a delight to watch and listen to.  Her first appearance, returning from Church, was accompanied by a (real) small dog on a lead – an interesting coup de theatre in a live opera, and I suppose it was to show that she was a more expressive character, to prepare us for the love affair that had already started.  But would Marfa have allowed a mere dog as a plaything, something so purely decorative and useless in such a regimented household?  I am not sure, and anyway, I think that for the dog to be introduced, it should have had some sort of continuing role as a living metaphor at other points in the drama.

The chorus has a small, but essential role in this opera and their spectral voices added to the music richness of the music.

As the sets were so stark, the lighting played an essential scene setting character.  At times the use of shadow reminded me to Murnau’s 1922 film of Nosferatu with characters throwing looming outlines, large and threatening.

The climactic suicide of Katia throwing herself into the Volga was a true spread-eagled jump – no walking down hidden stairs here on the far side of the set but a full body, break taking leap.

For me, this is the sort of production that justifies opera as an art form, a true combination of music, drama, spectacle.  The production played straight through with no intermissions, and lasted a doable one hour, forty-five minutes.  A triumph.

Janacek, Katia Kabanova, Liceu.  Buy a ticket and see it tomorrow, it’s your last chance!