The English National Opera season continues with a revival of David Alden’s 2006 staging of Janáček’s Jenůfa, conducted by Keri-Lynn Wilson, with Jennifer Davis in the title role and Susan Bullock as Kostelnička. Austere yet unflinching, it remains a formidable piece of theatre. Alden relocates the work to a drab industrial town in post-communist eastern Europe where the Buryja mill has become a factory, and Jenůfa and Kostelnička live in a dilapidated tenement. Charles Edwards’ sparse designs allow nothing to intrude upon the unremitting psychological intensity of it all, permitting Alden in turn to observe the protagonists with fierce compassion, and to probe the work’s sexual, emotional and religious resonances with great subtlety. It’s harrowing stuff, superbly realised.
Davis and Bullock are both outstanding here. Davis sings with an extraordinary radiance (hers really is a most beautiful voice) and vivid depth of feeling, so that Jenůfa’s rapture, anguish and eventual strength, moral as well as emotional, all really hit home. Her grief at the death of her baby has a desperate immediacy only achievable through superb artistry. As despair finally yields to love and hope in the closing scenes, the blaze in her tone is simply breathtaking. Bullock, meanwhile, is all stiff-backed, steely implacability until guilt begins to erode Kostelnička’s mind. Alden emphasises Kostelnička’s fanaticism and hypocrisy more than some directors, but Bullock, great singer-actor that she is, brings us face to face with the horror in the woman’s soul in a performance of unsparing veracity.
The men are excellent, as well. American tenor Richard Trey Smagur, in his ENO debut, makes a deeply touching Laca, gawky, devoted, terrified by his own potential for violence. He has a fine voice, too, strong and warm, his high notes easy and full. As Steva, John Findon captures the man’s slightly coarse sexuality, moral cowardice and fatal weakness of will wonderfully well. In the pit, meanwhile, Wilson seemingly favours a gradual accumulation of tension rather than seething volatility. Both approaches are equally valid, but on opening night, the first act was occasionally short on pressure and momentum, and it was not until she reached the great confrontations of Act II that the opera began fully to exert its vice-like grip. The way in which Wilson prises open Janáček’s orchestration to reveal its detail is utterly admirable, however, and the playing, all sensuous strings and vibrant, warm brass, is first rate.
• At London Coliseum until 27 March
