patrikpen: An Engrossing Premiere in Music and Vision 27 October

giovedì 29 dicembre 2016

An Engrossing Premiere in Music and Vision 27 October

An Engrossing Premiere

Janácek's 'Jenufa' in Palermo
impresses GIUSEPPE PENNISI

This performance was almost a premiere because, in the past, Jenůfa had been shown in Palermo only in 1979 for a few performances by Brno National Theatre at the Teatro Politeama (a structure built for circuses and maybe concerts but not for opera performances) because at that time Teatro Massimo was being restored — the repair and restoration work took twenty-two years. At the time, the local press was enthusiastic but the audience almost deserted the performances because the opera was not known, and was sung in Moravian (without surtitles). Janáček's first opera arrived in Italy in 1941, at the contemporary music Biennale in Venice. Over the last few years there has been a rediscovery. Jenůfa has been seen at La Scala, in Trieste, in Naples, at the Spoleto Festival, in Bologna and also in a few provincial theatres. Although Jenůfa's 1904 debut was in Brno, the work reached Prague only twelve years later, after great success in Germany (in Max Brod's translation), and especially at the Berlin Staatsoper (under Erich Kleiber).

Teatro Massimo di Palermo. Click on the image for higher resolution

On 23 October 2016, I attended the first performance of Jenůfa in the grand fully-filled Teatro Massimo. The production is a joint venture with Antwerp Opera House, with stage direction by Robert Carsen, sets and costumes by Patrick Kinmoth, lighting by Peter van Praet and Gabriele Ferro in the pit conducting the very complex score. The action is based on a gruesome plot with even the murder of a newborn baby. The music drama is integrated with Moravian folk singing and dancing in Act I and Act III. At a deeper level, it is an apologue of forgiveness as clearly shown by Jenůfa and Laça's arioso at the end of the opera. During the previous nearly ninety minutes, the orchestration had been a mosaic of small themes, often juxtaposed with one another and the vocal score, in prose not verse, and skillfully studied so that each consonant and vowel had a perfect fit in each note and register. The psychological features and developments of the main characters are explored much more deeply than in the play on which the opera is based.

Valeria Tornatore as Rychtarka, Andrea Dankova as Jenůfa and Gabriella Sbrogi as Starenka Buryojkova in Janáček's 'Jenůfa' at Teatro Massimo di Palermo. Click on the image for higher resolution

More specifically, the plot is intended to have a universal timeless meaning, not to be a crude drama tightly set in rural Moravia. Robert Carsen and Patrick Kinmoth use a very simple device to convey this: the action is moved from 1904 to the nineteenth forties and the set is made from simple walls and doors where all the time those who are outside can witness the real tragedy within the house and the nearby mill. The village authorities — the mayor, the parish priest and the villagers at large — are petty people who cannot understand the crux of the matter. Jenůfa, her stepmother and the two young male protagonists go through a Greek and Christian tragedy. (For a summary, please refer to 'A Timeless Message', 20 April 2015.) Greek because it is very crude, and Christian as underlined by Jenůfa's Ave Maria and Salve, Regina in Acts I and II, and by the stepmother's two prayers to God in search of a solution in Acts II and III. At the end, during the arioso, the doors and the walls disappear. Jenůfa and Laça are left alone in an open field: a real coup de théâtre.

A scene from Act II of Janáček's 'Jenůfa' at Teatro Massimo di Palermo. Click on the image for higher resolution

As in April 2015 in Bologna, Angeles Blancas Gulin, who often plays young and attractive women such as Cleopatra and Poppea, was made up to look old, and became a formidable stepmother. Andrea Dankova was the highly dramatic Jenůfa, and Peter Berger was Laça with a clear timbre and a magnificent high C. Martin Šrejma was the arrogant bullish and sleeky Steva. A vast number of others, many of them young Italian singers, counterpoint the principals, all to great success.