The English Nationwide Opera season continues with a revival of David Alden’s 2006 staging of Janáček’s Jenůfa, carried out by Keri-Lynn Wilson, with Jennifer Davis within the title function and Susan Bullock as Kostelnička. Austere but unflinching, it stays a formidable piece of theatre. Alden relocates the work to a colorless industrial city in post-communist japanese Europe the place the Buryja mill has develop into a manufacturing unit, and Jenůfa and Kostelnička reside in a dilapidated tenement. Charles Edwards’ sparse designs enable nothing to intrude upon the unremitting psychological depth of all of it, allowing Alden in flip to look at the protagonists with fierce compassion, and to probe the work’s sexual, emotional and non secular resonances with nice subtlety. It’s harrowing stuff, fantastically realised.
Davis and Bullock are each excellent right here. Davis sings with a rare radiance (hers actually is a most lovely voice) and vivid depth of feeling, in order that Jenůfa’s rapture, anguish and eventual energy, ethical in addition to emotional, all actually hit residence. Her grief on the demise of her child has a determined immediacy solely achievable by excellent artistry. As despair lastly yields to like and hope within the closing scenes, the blaze in her tone is just breathtaking. Bullock, in the meantime, is all stiff-backed, steely implacability till guilt begins to erode Kostelnička’s thoughts. Alden emphasises Kostelnička’s fanaticism and hypocrisy greater than some administrators, however Bullock, nice singer-actor that she is, brings us nose to nose with the horror within the lady’s soul in a efficiency of unsparing veracity.
The lads are wonderful, as effectively. American tenor Richard Trey Smagur, in his ENO debut, makes a deeply touching Laca, gawky, devoted, terrified by his personal potential for violence. He has a positive voice, too, sturdy and heat, his excessive notes straightforward and full. As Steva, John Findon captures the person’s barely coarse sexuality, ethical cowardice and deadly weak point of will splendidly effectively. Within the pit, in the meantime, Wilson seemingly favours a gradual accumulation of pressure somewhat than seething volatility. Each approaches are equally legitimate, however on opening night time, the primary act was sometimes brief on stress and momentum, and it was not till she reached the good confrontations of Act II that the opera started totally to exert its vice-like grip. The best way through which Wilson prises open Janáček’s orchestration to disclose its element is totally admirable, nevertheless, and the taking part in, all sensuous strings and vibrant, heat brass, is first fee.
