Janacek: Jenufa [DVD] [2011] [NTSC]

This was the first Janacek opera I saw over 50 years ago and it made a deep impression. It is the third Janacek opera to hit Blu-ray and all of them have proved very good. This is a relatively bare-bones production with the focus on the singing, acting and the wonderful music and it comes off very well. Polaski as the Kostelnicka I felt was particularly successful, not remotely either looking or sounding her quite advanced age. Dvorsky as Laca was also excellent and the loathsome Steva well portrayed by Schukoff looking just right for the part! There is no doubt Amanda Roocroft can sing and act this part but she is getting rather mature for what is a very young girl and I feel for Blu-ray recordings one should not fear to look for younger singers. Despite that I enjoyed the overall performance very much. The sound and orchestral playing is excellent and despite a rather dark frame the important parts of the picture come over well. It would have been nice to have had a few interviews but the booklet is well written. My only minor quibble was with the subtitles that often appear against a light background and can be hard to read. Janacek fans have no need to hesitate on this. How about From The House of the Dead next?

Janacek was 50 when he completed Jenufa in March 1903.On the 27th February 1903 his daughter Olga aged 21 died. Act 2 & 3 have the same similarity: anxiety about the life of a child,and dispair when the blow has fallen. The Premiere was held at the National theatre in 1904 and the Prague Premiere in 1916. His dramatic realism,affinity with the people and lyrical invention were appreciated. Janacek was preoccupied from the late 1880's with Moravian folk music which gave him a highly individualistic musical language,especially with his speech melody.THe tune and virtually singing speech over it.

Jenufa is caught between the Man she loves Steva and another Luca who comes to love her. But dominating the story is the Kostelnicka(Sacristan),a figure of strength who had herself been mistreated. Being her stepmother she rules Jenufa's life and eventually kills her baby. This opera blends intensity with heart rendering lyricism.

The conductor Ivor Bolton conducts the chorus and orchestra of the Teatro Real Madrid, with quick tempo's and brings forth the lyrical and heart breaking melodies.The Director and sets are by Stephane Braunschweig,using the minimalist approach. There is a wind meal in Act I,Act two a cot in the corner,Act three benches in front of a church. The costumes are traditional. The bluray pictures are fine.Dramatic Soprano Deborah Polaski as the Kostelnicka is in fine voice and sings passionately. Jenufa is Amanda Roocroft who is excellent in the part. Steva the villian Nicolai Schukoff is fine as is Luca, the part emotionally taken by Miroslav Dvorsky.The other parts are well sung. Orchestra and singers combined to give an emotionally draining performance of a well loved opera. Traditional in all respects.

All regions. subtitles. dts HD.Stereo. 16.9.

One of the composer's earliest works, from 1904, Janácek's Jenufa is a wonderful piece of work with a melodramatic but gritty story that has its roots in realism and traditional popular folklore, and it has music to match with a lush sweep of Wagnerian Romanticism, the punch of Slavic dance arrangements and a modern Strauss-like sensibility that ties the nature of the characters and their actions to identifiable but complex modern musical and speech tone patterns developed by Janácek. Unfortunately, this particular performance, recorded at the Teatro Real de Madrid in 2009, is for the most part not the most impressive means of experiencing one of the greatest operas of the early twentieth century.

It's difficult from this production to grasp any sense of time, location or community sensibility that is so important in identifying the nature of Jenufa's dilemma. Although it does seem to improve considerably by the time we reach the powerful and climactic third act, the whole sense of fluidity and rhythm of the work and the all-important speech tones seem to be lost in the uneven tempo of Ivor Bolton's conducting. It seems to limp from one scene to the next somewhat disjointedly, and it's not until quite late in the performance that the conductor manages to bring the precision and dramatic tone required out of the orchestra. The staging by Stéphane Braunschweig is also inadequate and it's not so much that the set is minimalist - each scene consisting of bare walls and one significant object in a spotlight to indicate location - as that there is little here to support mood or the dramatic action. Up until the final act, it's a fairly anonymous staging, dark, with stark lighting on the characters, that doesn't have the requisite impact and fails to draw the viewer into what is very much a story related to the community, as well as an interior journey.

The singing is good in all the principal roles, if not outstanding. There's nothing here, for example, to create the kind of impression or investment in the roles that Elisabeth Söderström and Eva Randová achieve in their incredibly passionate and chilling renditions of Jenufa and Kostelnicka for the classic Charles Mackerras recording of this opera (although it is perhaps unfair to expect any live performance to match this). Amanda Roocroft however is a fine Jenufa and Deborah Polaski an excellent Kostelnicka, both of them growing into the roles (or perhaps it just took me a while to acclimatise to them), gathering intensity as the opera reaches the third act. Nikolai Schukoff and Miroslav Dvorský as rival half-brothers Steva and Laca, also give fine performances. None of them however are helped by the inadequacy of the staging or by the mediocre playing of the orchestra.

Something close to the real impact of the work is achieved by the time we get to the remarkably beautiful and poignant duet at the conclusion of the opera, but otherwise, this production succeeds only as far as making Jenufa sound like an ordinary opera, when it's really a work that has so much more to offer and deserves a lot better than this in terms of staging and performance. It's not helped at all by the inadequate video transfer on the Blu-ray. The extremely dark stage (as is often the case in Teatro Real productions in my experience) scarcely looks better than standard-definition, with little detail and a highly contrasted image that exhibits lighting fluctuation and exposure variations. The image is somewhat juddery, and this isn't helped by jerky camera work. The disc contains only a Cast and Synopsis, but there is a more detailed examination of how the music works alongside the drama in the accompanying booklet. Three and a half stars.