Stemme and Eichenholz lead an explosive Jenůfa at Royal Swedish Opera

The dramatic arc of Janáček’s Jenůfa is delineated with the utmost clarity. In Act 1, we are introduced to the dramatis personae: Jenůfa, the naive girl seduced by the rake Števa, her foster mother, the Kostelnička, the pious pillar of their community, Laca, her faithfully infatuated admirer who sows the seeds of the tragedy when he disfigures his beloved in a fit of rage. Act 2 brings the climactic act: the murder of Jenůfa’s baby, a child unwanted by everyone except its mother. In Act 3, the inexorable consequences of the murder unfold.

Last night at Royal Swedish Opera, near the end of the current run of Annilese Miskimmon’s production, the build-up and the climax in Act 2 were explosive. Nina Stemme was gripping as the Kostelnička, leading us through every twist and turn of her mental anguish as she makes the journey from pious upholder of virtue to cold-blooded child murderess. Agneta Eichenholz, a late substitute for Cornelia Beskow, was completely credible as the girl with untold reserves of love but bereft of understanding of the real world in all its harshness. Both combined their dramatic abilities with great beauty of voice; Eichenholz in particular gave us the sweetest-sounding Jenůfa in my memory. It made for music drama to grip you by the throat and not let go.

The men were also strongly cast. Kjetil Støa showed the requisite bluster and bravado as Števa. Jesper Taube gave us proper character progression as Laca, starting out as grey and ineffectual, horrifying as he turns to knife crime and eventually becoming heroic in his steadfast loyalty to Jenůfa, his voice broadening out into an appealingly full tenor. The minor roles were all well sung and acted: in sum, this was an excellent cast whose movements and interactions were meticulously directed.

Miskimmon and designer Nicky Shaw set the opera as costume drama in a period not long after the opera’s composition in a place that could be anywhere in Europe, but is marked by the red arm bands of the “soldiers” as Ireland at the time of the Easter Rising. The set for Act 1 is the outside of a house which provides corners and windows around which people can skulk and spy. Acts 2 and 3 are a loving recreation of the Kostelnička’s home, a modest but well-appointed farmhouse kitchen, with a room upstairs in which Jenůfa cares for the baby. It’s simple, effective and full of telling directorial details: the bottom drawer of the dresser used as a crib, the Kostelnička giving her wedding ring to Laca to use as an engagement ring. Most of all, through the mayhem when the dead child is discovered and the mob rushes in to accuse Jenůfa, one’s gaze was drawn irresistibly to Stemme as she calmly ascends the stairs of her home to fetch her coat – a woman who knows exactly what she has to do – before turning to deliver her searing confession of murder to the astonished crowd.

But this performance had an Achilles heel, and an important one: the balance between orchestra and singers. Quite simply, the orchestra, conducted by John Fiore, were much louder than the singers, most of the time (at least from where I was sitting – other seats may have differed). They played with plenty of propulsive energy and plenty of colour, which could be enjoyed to its full in the few orchestra-only passages. But Janáček was a genius in matching the details of his orchestral parts to the detailed word setting and interplay between characters, and one simply can’t enjoy that genius when singers and instruments are such unequal partners. 

It’s disappointing that a production so excellent on every other level should be compromised by the failure to adjust levels properly. But I will choose to draw a veil over that disappointment and rather remember the all-round excellence of the acting, the vividness with which Stemme brought Act 2 to life and the overwhelming beauty of Eichenholz’s voice.