Jenufa by Leos Janacek in Valencia – simple triumph for Corinne Winters

Of all operas, there are a couple by Leos Janacek that I would profess to ‘know’, in that I have seen multiple productions, read and studied the libretti, listened to the music literally hundreds of times and read around the creation and setting. Jenufa would be one of them, all the way from an early 1970s production at Covent Garden in London, where it was sung in a clumsy English translation, through to last night’s offering in Valencia, where the Dutch National Opera’s production took the story out of rural, nineteenth century Moravia, and gave it a contemporary setting, more like a movie than a staging.

To start with the staging is perhaps an injustice to the performances, but that is where we are. This production, in order, perhaps, to emphasize the cinematic concept, featured an elevated space that was set back from the front of the stage. It was a lit rectangle, just like a movie screen. It provided a space that could be subdivided to provide multi-roomed interiors, complete with ceilings. It was a production where everything happened ‘inside’, even in act one, a factor that concentrated attention on the internal conflicts of the characters. Visually, it also concentrated attention on the characters’ actions. Everyone had to enter the space via a door and the rooms’ walls and ceilings seemed to focus attention on the psychological drama that unfolded. A drawback with this design, however, was the enclosure it created, a closure that rather deadened any sound that did not come from the very front of the set. In act one of Jenufa, there are movements in an out, on and off stage, and this set meant that there were moments when the singers fought to make themselves heard from within the rather insulated space.

In acts two and three, of course, there is a much greater concentration on the psychological drama than the introduction of protagonists, and it was here that the set came in to its own. In act two, for instance, when Jenufa is given a sleeping draught by the Kostelnicka, she has to retire to her bed, and this is often offstage, out of view. Here, as part of her concealment from public gaze, the room she occupied was set below the stairs amid gas pipes, drainpipes, and electricity meters. But this staging allowed her to remain centre stage, and, although asleep, in full view of the audience. And thus, while ever she remained centre stage, she still seemed to figure in the dialogue the other characters shared. And far from diverting attention from the interactions between Kostelnicka, Steva and Laca, the continued presence of Jenufa kept her character of the centre of the argument. This single design element allowed Jenufa’s solo, after Kostelnicka had already taken her baby away, to flow with the same psychological force of what had gone before, rather than become a new episode.

Act one of Jenufa is written in a different musical language from acts two and three. Nine years intervened between act one and the opera’s completion. Changes in compositional style are mirrored in how folksong is treated. In act one, the folk song is exactly that, literal, rooted harmonically, and very much a partygoers’ sing-along. By the time he had written the folk song melody that forms the choral passage in act three, where the girls celebrate Jenufa’s wedding, the musical language has been transformed. Yes, it’s celebratory, but there are question marks everywhere, because the song doesn’t easily find a key. Yes, it’s modal, but now not sweetly so.

In this staging, the toilet plays a central role, at least, in act one. Placed centre stage, it was used at the start of the action by Jenufa, who has a bout of sickness, emphasizing from the start that her pregnancy is the main issue. In a beautiful moment, during Kostelnicka’s diatribe about Steva’s drunkenness, when she relates her own experience of an abusive husband, one of the previously partying women retires to the toilet and silently grieves at her own circumstances as the words outside describe domestic troubles. This stresses the ongoing issue, the past for Kostelnicka, perhaps the avoidable future for Jenufa, but also the present for the silent partygoer.

And toilets figure elsewhere. Steva, unable to stomach the criticism in act one, retires, like a spoiled child to the washroom at the side to avoid having to listen. When things get tense in act three, a character retires to the toilet on the edge of the set for a moment of privacy. All of this adds to the internal nature of the drama, the fact that we are always dealing with how individuals cope psychologically with pressure, with challenge, with opportunity, with options. They have to think things through, and even still might come to the wrong conclusion.

What perhaps none of us rationalizes are the emotions that give rise to physical attraction and sex. Here we are driven by feelings that often control us and take us over before we are even conscious of them. Jenufa is clearly besotted with Steva and continues to be so until, very late on, she is won over by Laca’s albeit flawed devotion. The irrational passion that is in all of us thus explains how the responsible, sensible, caring, competent Jenufa got pregnant in the first place. It also justifies how this particular staging ends, with Jenufa and Laca, rather than walking hopefully towards a better future, get down to having sex the minute the guests have left their tragic wedding. The sensuality, after all, is there in the music.

And, at last, I can turn to praising the Jenufa of Corinne Winters. A more convincing, complete portrayal of the role has perhaps never existed. Roberta Alexander was superb, if a little too suffering. Asmik Gregorian has recently claimed the role for herself with a unique blend of vulnerability and steadfastness. But this evening’s performance by Corinne Winters adds much to this role. Corinne Winters’ Jenufa is a complete and credible modern woman, professional, competent, caring, needing love and affection, passionate, responsible, vulnerable, realistic… the list could be endless. Let’s say human. This, after all, is a complete person, with all the contradictions and qualities that implies.

In act one, Jenufa is in her office, the young competent professional, though abused, perhaps as much by her own passion as by Steva’s insistence. In act two, she is in a jumpsuit for lounging around the house. The elegance has gone, the work-a-day requirements of being a mother having taken over. In act three, she is in white, hardly the ‘dressed like a window’ of the libretto, but the white becomes a statement in itself, a determination to look to the future, however, limited its boundaries may appear. Perhaps the most moving moment of the story happens when Kostelnicka, having just drowned the baby in act two, tells Jenufa that she has been in a fever, and that the baby has died. How easy would it be to revert to paroxysms of pain, histrionics of emotion? Here, Corinne Winters, merely sinks to her knees in her jumpsuit, and stays there, devastated, visibly emotionally destroyed.

Petra Lane, this production’s Kostelnicka, gave a moving and convincing performance of this truly demanding role. One was never in any doubt she was convinced that she was doing the right thing. The guilt of the third act was perhaps a little under-played, but this was probably as directed.

The two men in the principal roles often do not often figure significantly in reviews of Jenufa. They can all too easily become stereotypes. But here they too were rounded human beings, if that term can be applied to the selfish, self-interested, self-obsessed character of Steva. Norman Rheinhardt’s portrayal made the character’s flaws apparent, however, and though never excusable, they became understandable.

Brandon Jovanovich’s Laca, however, was nothing less than revelatory. Here we have a character complex enough to be in love with a woman he physically abuses. But he is ultimately trustworthy and dependable, and here, also, passionate. Brandon Jovanovich’s voice is a perfect match for the part. I never thought I would hear a more convincing Laca than Philip Langridge, but Brandon Jovanovic has indeed made this character his own.

And finally - finally? - the music. Janacek’s score, especially in the final two acts is a masterpiece. The music never dominates, but always contributes. It adds subtle pictures to illustrate and define the psychological drama, often creating that drama via the juxtaposition of small cubist planes and perspectives, so that emotions flutter around an idea that can be seen from multiple viewpoints. Janacek’s musical language is so subtle and so communicative that it cannot be described in words. And like all languages, it does take time to learn, but once familiar, it says so much that is different, and that is original, inexpressible in any other way, or perhaps by any other composer.

Gustavo Gimeno‘s reading of the score emphasized the subtlety and sheer physical beauty of the sound, rather than the composer’s characteristic spikiness. But this reading of the score did emphasize the normality of the people depicted and the universality of their dilemmas. The production proved to be an emotional roller coaster, but overall, it’s gentle contours stressed its everyday significance. It will live long in the mind, and, hopefully, long on the stage.

 

 

Reflections on String Quartet No.1, Kreutzer Sonata, by Leos Janacek

Leos Janacek´s musical voice is unique. No other music behaves or sounds like his. There are no long lines or tunes. His harmonies are unlike anything you have ever heard. He wrote two mature string quartets. He destroyed a youthful third. He wrote the Quartet No.1, Kreutzer Sonata, in nine days in 1923, some ninety-five years ago. He was 69 years old. This is modern music that is not modern. It is not atonal like Schoenberg, nor is it percussively experimental like Bartok. It is not the neo-classicism of Stravinsky. Janacek is unique. Uniquely passionate.

I have written the first paragraph like a series of almost unconnected statements. But it returns to its own beginning and repeats itself, or almost repeats itself. The style is a deliberate choice because Janacek wrote like this, both in music and words. His style is almost musical cubism, where a shape, a form, a subject is visible, but it is broken into pieces that do not join. The pieces seem to repeat, but they are never quite the same, and the shapes are probably never quite complete. There are always questions, rarely statements.

Like Wagner, Janacek uses leitmotifs, tiny musical germs that signify a character, an emotion or an action. They reappear throughout a work, but never simply repeat. In this first quartet you will hear a sweet, slightly sad phrase of only two bars. It is unmistakably feminine. This contrasts with a nervous, repeated motif of short, staccato notes and regular use of ponticello, harsh bowing near the bridge. This is male. It is angry and jealous. The contrast between female vulnerability and sincerity and masculine impetuosity and pride is played out through the work. But in Janacek these ideas and associated phrases are short. They are gone almost before you have heard them. Musically, the sound of Janacek is more like Bruckner than any other composer. This is no surprise, since he studied in Vienna when Bruckner´s works were being performed. The difference is that the repeats and variations in Bruckner last for several minutes. In Janacek, they are all finished in seconds, and they sound more like Puccini.

The quartet´s subtitle, Kreutzer Sonata, is not a homage to Beethoven, though there is a quote from the Beethoven sonata, brutally compressed by Janacek, in the third movement. The quotation has musical and pictorial intentions, because the Kreutzer Sonata of the subtitle actually refers to a short story by Tolstoy of the same name. The quartet is not a literal programme of the story, but more of a cubist painter’s impression of it.

In the story a man spends much time and energy trying to analyse his marriage. His attitudes are conservative and male-centred. His wife, however, developed independent interests, a quality he himself could not understand. For him, a wife should be submissive and obedient. But this wife took up music and learned the piano. She often played alongside her teacher, a violinist who regularly visited the family home. The pair decide to rehearse Beethoven´s Kreutzer Sonata for a performance and the husband becomes jealous of his wife’s musical bond with the violinist teacher. In Tolstoy, the fact that these unmarried people play music together is problematic.

As the pair rehearse, they play better together and the husband’s jealousy grows. He needs to feel in control of his wife’s experience. He confronts her, becomes angry and stabs her in a fit of rage. She dies, but he is not severely punished because he was the husband and adultery was suspected. Music was to blame. This story unfolds during the String Quartet No1 by Janacek, but it is not quite the same story.

This work was commissioned and first performed by the Bohemian Quartet in 1924. In his biography of Janacek, Jaroslav Vogel describes how the quartet´s second violinist, the composer Jozef Suk, believed that Janacek wanted the work to be a moral protest against men´s despotic attitude towards women. Suk would have been reasonably close to Janacek, incidentally, because he was married to Dvorak´s daughter and Janacek and Dvorak had been close friends. His opinion would thus have been an informed one. Whereas Tolstoy´s story suggests that music is sensual and rather dangerous, Janacek makes entirely the opposite point. Here music is human conscience. It presents an emotional liberation via music and asks if it should also represent the social liberation and independence of women.

This is an interesting point. Janacek did not treat his own wife well. He had affairs. He was already by the 1920s obsessed with Kamila Stosslova, a married woman over thirty years his junior. He wrote over 700 letters to her. She replied twice. Much of what he wrote was inspired by his extra-marital longing for Kamila. Perhaps he wanted to liberate her via this music, and so there is much evidence of his own guilt and selfishness in his apparently liberal message. In contemporary terms, Janacek’s obsession with Kamila came close to “stalking”, but the creative energy his obsession generated resulted in fifteen years of intense musical activity.

He was almost sixty before his first success. He had lived a teacher’s life, devotedly developing the music school in Brno. He became obsessed with a younger woman. He became estranged from his wife. And, in those final years, he wrote four great operas, two quartets, several orchestral works and much other music, all of which, like the Kreutzer Sonata, tells a story. It is his story. He, himself, is a vulnerable individual. He is flawed. He is also a genius, and thus a modern human being with his own voice.

Leaves From His Life, essays by Leoš Janáček, edited by V and M Tausky

About twenty years ago my wife and I were on a train that came to a halt. It was late afternoon in mid-August. We were on holiday. A weak sun was already casting long shadows from the power-line gantries across the heavy industrial landscape in view. It was a local train with low priority at the signals. The carriage was nearly empty on this service form Kutná Hora to Prague. As we awaited the passing of an express, the only sounds came from steam hissing from vents in the pipe-work of nearby factories.

A young man on a seat opposite started to doze. His head nodded forward. His dark checked shirt opened wider at the neck to reveal white skin which, unlike his head and neck, had remained untouched by the sun while he had worked his day on a construction site. His boots and trousers had streaks of earth and cement that confirmed his trade. The express passed by, slowly, without much noise and then, just seconds later, our train lurched into slow motion. The young man woke up with a start. “Pfui,” he said as he rubbed his palms against his face.

And, for the next few minutes, all I could hear in my head was music replayed from memory. There is a moment in an opera, a Czech opera, where a character awakens from sleep. He not only says this word, but he sings it with exactly the same intonation and stress as my fellow traveller did that August afternoon on a stalled suburban train. I ought to have realised immediately that this was no coincidence. 

In part I did, but I was not prepared for how perfectly the composer had set that strange little word. The music literally came to life. The opera in question is by Leoš Janáček. He spent much of his time listening to and notating the music of everyday sounds and speech. These he used to set the words of his own libretti, all of which are highly naturalistic rather than stereotypically operatic. He repeats very little. There are no set pieces. The people are never counts or kings, princesses or heroes. There is the occasional fox and frog, however, and many chickens. But for the most part, Janáček’s characters are like the slumbering builder on the train, ordinary people, working class, middle class, merchants or labourers, sometimes artists, sometimes prisoners. 

On first hearing his music can sound disjointed, lacking the flowing lines that lyric opera fans might expect. But Janáček’s music is both cubist and yet still wholly naturalistic. People really do speak like that. Of course he stretches the points. It is opera, after all. But it is not only speech that is naturalistic in Janáček, as anyone who reads this beautiful little book, Leaves From His Life by Vilem and Margaret Tausky, will soon realise. Janáček notated the sound of the sea, birdsong, the trickling of water in streams, the wind, coughs and sneezes, and about anything else that took his fancy. 

Above all he notated the sounds of speech, words married to their expression. In one respect, he was the complete impressionist, but in another the complete opposite because he then reassembled these snippets of collected reality to form something wholly original. Some of essays, reminiscences, musical analysis and occasional literary reflections that fill leaves From His Life were written for the composer’s own column in local newspaper in Brno. 

I first read the book over twenty years ago, just before my holiday in then Czechoslovakia, during which I visited Brno to stand in Janáček’s study. Re-reading it now is something of a revelation. If anything it seems fresher now than then, but there again perhaps it’s me that’s mellowed with age in a way that Leoš Janáček never did. If I had another life I would learn Czech to gain a fuller appreciation of the man’s music. It must be worth it! As an example, just imagine the sound of the opening of the Credo from the Glagolitic Mass. In Czech, the word is vĕruju, I believe. Janáček’s setting is three notes with a long stress in the middle. Try saying ‘I believe’ or even worse, ‘credo’ to the same sound. It only works in Czech. Anyone who is the least bit interested in opera and certainly anyone who as listened to Leoš Janáček’s music will love Leaves From His Life. 

The writing style alone is a wonderful insight into his music. The man really did think in those terse little aphorisms. But what shines through his music and his words is his love of and devotion to the experience of ordinary folk, and the occasional bird, furry creature or insect: life, in short. View the book on amazon Janacek: Leaves from His Life