Kat'a Kabanova: Lehnhoff A.davis / Lpo Gustafson F.palmer

Kat'a Kabanova - DVD
Tobias Hoheisel's designs - a combination of bare outlines and the neurotic flaring colors of Edvard Munch's expressionistic world - provide the setting for Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production of Janacek's three-act opera for the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Lehnhoff's sparse and intense production achieves a harrowing realism in its depiction of the suffocating and frustrated emotions that are destroying a straight-laced, middle-class household. Janacek's incandescent score, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Andrew Davis, has seldom achieved such perfect unity with the dramatic action as it has in this landmark production. There is an extraordinary magnetic tension in the performance of Nancy Gustafson who sings Kat'a, the free spirit visibly consumed by emotions too powerful for the slender frame that contains them. Felicity Palmer plays the Kabanovicka, Kat'a's mother-in-law, a repressed figure of fearsome authority, with complete command over her shuffling, well-meaning son, Tichon, sung by Ryland Davies.