Leos Janacek: Jenufa
Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, 2005
Jenufa - Nina Stemme
Kostelnicka Buryjovka - Eva Marton
Laca Klemen - Jorma Silvasti
Steva Buryja - Par Lindskog
Starenka Buryjovka - Viorica Cortez
Starek - Rolf Haunstein
Rychtar - Enric Serra
Rychtarka - Begona Alberdi
Karolka - Christiane Boesiger
Pastuchnyna - Carole Marais
Barena - Sandra Galiano
Jano - Ana Nebot
Tetkan - Annett Andriesen
Orquesta y coro del Gran Teatre del Liceu
Peter Schneider, conductor
Stage Director: Olivier Tambosi
NTSC
Sound Formats: PCM-STEREO, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1
Picture Format: 16:9
Subtitles: GB, D, F, I, E, Catalanisch
Region Code: 0
Running Time: 127min
Jenufa tells a heartbreaking story of rural life in the 19th century: a baby is killed to protect a young girl’s honour. This tragedy befalls the family of the old miller, the Grandmother Buryjovka, a respected figure in a small country village. The pressure of the extremely closed, morally repressive and hypocritical society leads the protagonists to inexorably holding to such traditional values as honour and respect, no matter what the costs.
TDK presents a staging of the work sung in the original Czech language. The production was directed by French-Austrian opera director Olivier Tambosi. His version of the work was first produced at the Metropolitan Opera New York in 2003 to high acclaim and was revived there at the beginning of 2007. In 2005 it was staged in Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu - once again proving the opera house to be Spain’s most successful and internationally renowned stage.
For Janacek, opera was a vehicle for describing reality, and he pushed this idea to the point of fashioning a new theory about verismo. Its basis was that the two major strands, music and drama, were to be linked indivisibly in his operas. Olivier Tambosi takes up the challenge in a Jenufa that is realistic, clear and direct in its exposition of the characters’ feelings. Yet he is also concerned to make key motifs in the work visible through symbolic elements on stage.
The stage realism of the customs and traditions helps to define the social control that the community exercises over the individual, yet at the same time the austerity of the theatrical language highlights the main roles, who are then relatively free to develop the dramatic potential of their characters. There is no pessimistic view of human nature in Jenufa, however, and no moral judgement limiting the future for the protagonists - there is always rebirth and hope as promised by nature, shown in this production by reflecting the sowing and reaping of the harvest in the stage design.
The director’s haunting dramaturgy is admirably brought to life by a cast of outstanding singer-actors. Swedish soprano Nina Stemme in the title-role is perfectly cast for her highly dramatic yet introspective acting and a versatile voice that conveys both Jenufa’s suffering and her will-power. Hungarian soprano Eva Marton has enjoyed ongoing success on international opera stages, her stage personality and impressive voice bring the tragic character of Jenufa’s pious stepmother, the sacristan to life. Swedish tenor Par Lindskog is -teva, one of the two half-brothers, who both have their own interest in Jenufa. The other, Laca, is sung by Finnish tenor Jorma Silvasti who has just sung the same role at the revival of the Jenufa production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Conductor of this staging was the then resident conductor Peter Schneider who has a long affiliation with the theatre.
The result is a Jenufa of immediately accessible emotions, with altogether physical characterization, explicit and more brutal than other stagings of the opera. To support the composer’s focus on sharply defined characters, Tambosi sets the major part of the action on a raised platform, reaching out into the open space of a field. The platform is dominated by a stone, the most weighty symbolic element shown on stage. It starts breaking through the platform in the first act, appearing at its most complete form in the second act when the child is born and Jenufa’s burden is heaviest. By the third act, however, the same stone has changed into rocky terrain, as if it had broken up into several pieces. The “stone-child” has been exploded - a symbol of the infanticide committed by the Kostelnicka, the sacristan - but its traces remain visible, their presence boding tragic consequences.
The clear and ingeniously simple stage design allows the recording camera to get close to the character without losing the dramatic context. Thus the viewer can experience the intensity of the opera performance visually better than in the auditorium of an opera house. The recording was acoustically enhanced with “Authentic Surround-Sound Experience” - a technology that analyses original stereo sound and turns it into a real 5.1 surround-sound experience.
( TDK )
