Antonio Pappano’s 23-year reign as the Royal Opera’s music director is a dauntingly hard act to follow. Yet there could be no mistaking the support and enthusiasm with which the Covent Garden audience greeted Pappano’s successor-designate Jakub Hrůša for the first time before he takes over the reins officially in the autumn. This was, one sensed, a big moment for modern Britain’s responsibilities towards this so often and so unfairly traduced art form.
We were not to be disappointed. It helped enormously that the Czech conductor was on home musical territory. Janáček’s searingly contemporary Jenůfa, the composer’s 1904 tale of village violence, shame and forgiveness, is in Hrůša’s DNA, and he conducted it in Chicago a year ago. The Covent Garden orchestra has also played Jenůfa recently, when Claus Guth’s production was launched in 2021. Yet, with the art form itself on the line and the orchestra keen to show the new boss its mettle, Hrůša gave an account of rare intensity and authority, not to be missed.
