Here’s a ticklish one. Damiano Michieletto’s 2021 Glyndebourne production of Janáček’s Kátya Kabanová, here revived for the first time, breaks a key tenet of high-concept opera. Whether or not you are keen on Regietheater (as ‘director’s theatre’ was tagged when it first erupted in Germany’s glut of opera houses), in the right hands the process can be revelatory. Christof Loy’s recent staging of Louise at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence was a case in point. The present production, however, is the opposite. Where it should reveal, it obfuscates.
Kátya Kabanová is probably the composer’s most cerebral opera. We care for the heroine because her emotional turmoil has frayed her state of mind; we are exasperated by the weakness of her husband and the heartlessness of his possessive mother-in-law; while Varvara and Kudrjáš, the scenario’s parallel lovers, lead a charmed romance devoid of the complications that beset Kátya, the man she married (Tichon) and the man she loves (Boris).
Not an opera of landcapes, then. Unfortunately, though, Michieletto has staged this interior tale of anguish as something from ‘The Ladybird Book of Expressionism’. While characters enter and emote a bit, they hand in their personalities at the door and chase symbols instead. Is it a rock in that birdcage? Must be the symbol of her physically and emotionally barren marriage.Those feathers she catches? Oh look, they belong to the elusive angel of happiness, which explains why that nasty Kabanicha pulls the rest of them out of the celestial creature’s wings. There's to be no joy on the menu for Kátya, clearly. Just lots of constricting birdcages… and guess who ends up inside one of them.
It is wretched stuff, almost juvenile in its blatancy, which is sad for the wonderful singers and players who in other respects elevate this great opera to the highest degree. Kateřina Kněžíková, an artist who is completely inside the work's idiom, returns in the title role she sang four years ago, while Nicky Spence graduates from singing Tichon to the more rewarding character of Boris. His previous role is now in the hands of Jaroslav Březina who, like Kněžíková, sings in his native tongue.
The remaining tenor role can often be the most interesting of the three, both musically and dramatically. Not here. Sam Furness does everything right as Kudrjáš but the director cannot find a way to bring this sympathetic character to life. Rachael Wilson, however, is the evening’s revelation as Varvara, her mezzo-soprano timbre big and beautiful. Sir John Tomlinson, who is starting to choose his roles a little more carefully as anno domini creeps up on him, is both curmudgeonly and fruity as the crusty Dikoj and Susan Bickley is musically splendid yet blissfully pursed-lipped as Kabanicha.
Hard to find fault with any of them, and certainly not with Robin Ticciati or the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whose account on opening night was electrifying. What gives with Michieletto, though? His terrific Cav & Pag for The Royal Opera is so psychologically invested that one has to wonder what set him on an overgrown path to cliché-ville. Hats off to Eleonora Gravagnola for reviving it, though. She did him (if it’s quite the word) proud.
