A scorching Diary of One Who Disappeared at Janáček Brno Festival

In many ways, Scottish tenor Nicky Spence and Czech mezzo Václava Krejčí Housková’s program at this year’s Janáček Brno Festival could be the very model of the modern song recital. What they brought to the stage was far from the stiff, “stand and sing” presentations of yore. Instead, we were treated to risk-taking vocalism, movement, dramatic lighting… and even some drums!

As an Anglophone attending this very Czech festival, I find myself thinking about audience reception a lot. I was a little concerned during Spence’s opening set of various British folk songs by Britten, Huw Thomas Watkins, Buxton Orr and… Anonymous. Never mind a predominantly Czech audience, this native English speaker had a hard time catching the idiomatic Scottish and Welsh texts. But my fears were quickly erased as soon as Spence stepped on stage proving himself the ultimate showman in his jaunty waistcoat and socks that popped. The colours didn’t end there as he immediately demonstrated a willingness to prioritise storytelling, bending his vocal technique to the dictates of the text. 

A stellar example was the final song of the set, The Devil is Away with the Exciseman. Spence pulled out all the stops with a no-doubt pitch perfect Scots burr, and given the toe-tapping rhythm, his own version of the jig. Throughout the “English” set he alternated between falsetto and straight tone, all the way up to full heroic as he sang babies to sleep, a humorous tale of a snail, and a paean to good whisky!

Next were four of Janáček’s Moravian Folk Poetry in Songs. These relatively simple pieces represent the important work the composer did in the early 1900s collecting Czech folk songs and scoring them for piano and voice. Czech mezzo-soprano Václava Krejčí Housková, a soloist with Brno National Theatre’s opera ensemble, delivered these delicate beauties in an appropriately “simple” manner. No big theatrics, and a judicious taming of her vibrato. 

The recital’s main event, Janáček’s song cycle, The Diary of One Who Disappeared, which premiered in Brno in 1921, was presented here in true theatrical fashion. We were, after all, in Brno’s “other” opera house, the exquisite jewel box Mahen Theatre. As the cycle began, all the lights were turned off, gradually coming back on as Spence made his entrance, stage right. 

From thereon in, we were drawn into the world of a man who forsakes the bourgeois expectations of his family to make a life with the gypsy, Zefka, who becomes pregnant with his child. The cycle is a tour de force for tenor, requiring huge amounts of really big singing and the ability to paint a wide spectrum of emotion. Spence delivered on both accounts. As Zefka, Housková made her entrance from the back of the stalls bathed in red light, unleashing the full power of her lower register to embody the “other” who draws the man away from his family. 

Pianist Julius Drake was also a key player in the drama. In The Diary,  Janáček treats the piano like an orchestra. As the cycle reached its climax, Drake played like a devil unleashed, evoking all the colours, volume and excitement one usually associates with the sections of a huge symphony orchestra. His commitment was awe-inspiring.

As an encore, Spence joined Housková in a reprise of one of the folk songs, not singing himself, but rather, banging on a drum. Then, all the singers (including Romana Kružíková, Kristína Kubová, Ivana Pavlů who formed the trio that comments on the unfolding relationship between the man and the gypsy) returned for a joyful dance-based tune complete with choreography. This was indeed a triple-threat kind of recital.