Jenůfa

by Leoš Janáček

seen at the Coliseum on 6 July 2016

This is a revival of David Alden's 2006 ENO production, which he directs once again. It is conducted by Mark Wigglesworth and designed by Charles Edwards. It features Laura Wilde in the title role of Jenůfa, Michaela Martens as her stepmother the Kostelnička, Nicky Spence as Števa and Peter Hoare as Laca.

This opera, based on the play Její Pastorkyňa ('Her Stepdaughter') by Gabriela Preissová, concerns the catastrophe which befalls Jenůfa and the family around her when she becomes pregnant by the feckless Števa (a cousin of some sort, at least by adoption). She hopes to avoid the disgrace by marrying her lover, since he has not been conscripted, but when he turns up drunk in celebration her stepmother the Kostelnička (the village sacristan), unaware of the situation, insists that any thought of marriage must be delayed until Števa can prove himself worthy. Števa's half brother Laca is in love with Jenůfa, yet he slashes her across the cheek in frustration. Later, even though he quails at the social disgrace, he offers to marry her, having been assured by the Kostelnička that the child has died. In fact, it is only once she has made this claim that the Kostelnička actually takes the child (a week old) out of the house and drowns it in the nearby frozen river. A couple of months later, on the day of the wedding, the baby's body is discovered, and though suspicion first falls on Jenůfa, the Kostelnička confesses, and admits brokenly that she thought more of her own disgrace than of her stepdaughter's feelings. Remarkably, Jenůfa forgives her stepmother as she is taken away for trial, and she also affirms her new-found love for Laca as the opera ends.

From this summary it is clear that the work contains a tangle of human and familial relationships, as well as a suffocating set of social expectations, all of which impinge on the lacerating sense of propriety which impels the Kostelnička's actions. The whole narrative could have been a melodramatic potboiler, but it is on the contrary a strong indictment of the crushing disadvantages to women in the social milieu of late nineteenth century Moravia. (In fact the play was strongly criticised for its realistic depiction of village society when playgoers preferred to imagine that country folk were innocent, goodhearted and cheerful.)

This production has been set in the mid to late 20th century, in the time when Moravia, as part of Czechoslovakia, was behind the Iron Curtain (the opera was first performed in 1904). Somehow the bleakness of the setting, with a rundown mill-yard in the first act, and peeling grey wallpaper in the Kostelnička's house thereafter, renders the time shift perfectly plausible; there is a drabness to life in the village which helps to explain its conservatism and the simmering resentments of so many of the characters. In such ordinary surroundings, it is quite startling to have quite garish and unsubtle lighting effects underpin moments of extreme tension or episodes of introspection, but this too turns out to be most effective.

The principals were all excellent, singing clearly and acting well the various characters. Michaela Martens in particular as the Kostelnička achieved a moving transition between strait-laced strength and miserable remorse, making her predicament painful even as her solution to it was repellent. Laura Wilde charted Jenůfa's journey with equal skill, so that the final triumphant brass chords from the always excellent ENO orchestra, which accompany her forgiveness of her stepmother and her determination to make a life with Laca, seemed fully justified - a remarkable achievement.