Kát'a Kabanová

by Leoš Janáček

seen at Covent Garden on 9 February 2019

Edward Gardner conducts Amanda Majski as Kát'a, Susan Bickley as her mother-in-law Kabanicha, Andrew Staples as her husband Tichon and Pavel Černoch as her lover Boris in a new production (only the second at Covent Garden) directed by Richard Jones and designed by Anthony McDonald.

Leoš Janáček based his 1922 opera on a play called The Thunderstorm by the 19th-century Russian dramatist Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky. It concerns the idealistic and unhappy Kát'a, trapped in an unsatisfactory marriage with Tichon Kabanov (though each claims to love the other), and living in the Kabanov household with Tichon's incredibly vicious and domineering mother known as Kabanicha (a diminutive of the family name). 

In their first encounter in the opera, Kabanicha complains to Tichon that he obviously no longer loves his mother now that he has a wife. Kát'a tries to defend him and is immediately told to be quiet; she is obviously beneath her mother-in-law's contempt. When Tichon is told by his mother that he should go away to the local town market for a few days, Kát'a first asks to accompany him, which he rejects, then asks him to make her swear an oath not to speak to other people (ie men) while he is away, which he finds distasteful. Yet when Kabanicha insists that he impose on his wife stringent forms of behaviour, including such a provision, he acquiesces and dutifully repeats her bullying words. As soon as he is gone, Kabanicha upbraids Kát'a for not being mournful enough in her husband's absence.

In such a poisonous atmosphere, in which, furthermore, no-one is in a position to face up to Kabanicha's intransigence, nothing can really go well. In her husband's absence Kát'a succumbs to temptation and begins a dalliance with Boris, the nephew of a prominent local merchant who already despises him; later, consumed with guilt, she confesses to it, thus ruining Boris, distressing her husband, outraging the villagers, and confirming Kabanicha's self-righteous contempt. What option does she have other than to throw herself into the River Volga?

It's a grim and claustrophobic scenario - claustrophobic even though most of the action actually takes place out of doors (the one scene inside the Kabanov house only confirms the queasy social restrictions poisoning everyone's lives). The notional outdoors does not look liberating in Andrew McDonald's excellent stage design in which the sides of the stage are enclosed by two huge walls of unpainted pale wood, each containing several swing doors which are virtually invisible when shut, and very often a similar wall slides down at the back to create a large, though still imprisoning, box. Even with villagers casting fishing rods into the orchestra pit, a nod to the presence of the Volga, everyone is trapped. An inventive use of lighting highlights the moments when Kát'a sings of her thoughts, so we can easily see how fragile she really is.

The cast was uniformly excellent, with Amanda Majeski in particular singing the role of Kát'a with an unerring tone across a great vocal range. Susan Bickley's Kabanicha was in visual contrast rigid with repressed social dignity, but vocally a formidable and powerful contrast to the younger woman. The menfolk and minor characters made for an ensemble of really high quality, matched by Edward Gardner's great conducting of the orchestra in the pit.