Janáček, Kát'a Kabanová
Posted by Charles T. Downey at 8:37 PM |
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From ionarts (Leoš Janáček, August 2):
Here is an interesting article (Back to the old country, July 26) by John Tusa in The Guardian, in which the author goes back to the country where he was born, Czechoslovakia, on the trail of composer Leoš Janáček, whose 150th birthday we celebrate this year. Janáček—whom Tusa describes as "the musical puzzle, the composer who came from nowhere, who left no school, yet who strides the international opera scene to this day"—may be the greatest opera composer of the 20th century in the minds of many people, myself included. On his first night in Brno, Janáček's professional base, Tusa witnessed a performance I would love to have heard:
Kát'a Kabanová opens with the clerk, Van'a, admiring the waters of the Volga River, where the action will end tragically. This opera revolves around an adulterous love triangle: Tichon (tenor), a weak man dominated by his horrible, bitter mother, Kabanicha (contralto); his wife, Kát'a; and her lover, Boris (tenor). Kát'a's sexual repression in the first act is as frenetic as that of the governess in Benjamin Britten's Turn of the Screw (1954). At the opening, she pines for her life before it was stifled by her marriage, when she as free as a bird. She used to love going to church, where she had ecstatic visions of angels in the rising incense. Kát'a obsessively dreads (fantasizes about?) the "terrible sin" she knows she is going to commit ("on the edge of an abyss," she confides to herself that she is "thinking of someone"). She begs her spineless husband not to go on the trip her mother-in-law forces him to take, to no avail.
With Tichon away, Kabanicha continues her malicious attacks on Kát'a in Act II. Varvara, the family's foster daughter, tempts Kát'a toward her dreaded sin, by offering her the key to the garden, where she could meet her lover that night. Kát'a wonders what she can safely allow herself to do: look at Boris? speak to Boris? see Boris? If we had any doubt about the sexual nature of Kát'a's religious mysticism, Boris, waiting for her in the garden, tells his friend, "when she prays, she is beautiful." In the third act, everyone is brought together in a cave during the terrible storm (whence the title of the source play), and Kát'a rashly confesses her sin. Distraught over this confession, Kát'a sings an incredible monologue of insanity, in which she obsesses over her guilt, insisting that she should be punished and thrown in the river. The orchestra, which from the somber opening introduction has provided the music of the characters' inner turmoil (especially Kát'a's), is joined in this final scene by the "funeral chanting" of an offstage chorus. Before she jumps into the Volga, Kát'a sings of how "birds will sing over my grave and flowers will blossom." The rotten elders of the opera say equally heartless things when villagers bring the dead body to the cave: Boris's uncle Dikoj says to Tichon, "There's your Kát'a"; Kabanicha says coldly to the villagers, "Good people, I thank you for your kindness." Only the faceless chorus laments the suicide.
Janáček's dramatic economy in this opera is nothing short of remarkable. George Martin observes that this opera's three acts take 15 fewer minutes to perform than Strauss's one-act Elektra. There is nothing vocally or orchestrally that is not absolutely necessary. He relentlessly pursues a sparse vocal style that is sharp and effective. What is surprising to realize about Janáček's operas is that, although the composer died in 1928 at the age of 74, his operas were largely unknown outside of Czechoslovakia for so long. Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle, from 1918, was not premiered in the English-speaking world until 1946 and more widely in the 1950s, and Kát'a Kabanová, from 1921, was also premiered in England and the U.S. in the 1950s. Some of Janáček's other operas took even longer, like the wonderful Cunning Little Vixen (1924 vs. the 1960s), The Makropulos Affair (1926 vs. the 1960s) The Excursions of Mr. Brouček (1920 vs. the 1970s/80s), and the postumously premiered From the House of the Dead (1930), based on the Dostoevsky novel Memoirs from the House of the Dead, which was not staged in the United States until 1990.
From ionarts (Leoš Janáček, August 2):
Here is an interesting article (Back to the old country, July 26) by John Tusa in The Guardian, in which the author goes back to the country where he was born, Czechoslovakia, on the trail of composer Leoš Janáček, whose 150th birthday we celebrate this year. Janáček—whom Tusa describes as "the musical puzzle, the composer who came from nowhere, who left no school, yet who strides the international opera scene to this day"—may be the greatest opera composer of the 20th century in the minds of many people, myself included. On his first night in Brno, Janáček's professional base, Tusa witnessed a performance I would love to have heard:
On the first evening, the Janacek Opera of the Brno National Theatre were performing Katya Kabanova. Part of a fortnight's anniversary festival including all of Janacek's stage works, it was a turbulent evening. Janacek sung in Czech by Czechs has a special impact; this is not surprising, given Janacek's obsession with the way the spoken language sounds and the way in which it influences composed music. But it was the theatrical brutality of the piece that took me aback. The speed with which Janacek disposes of the action, culminating in Katya's suicide, is breathtaking, yet achieved without skimping. The emotional impact is huge, because the economy and concentration of the music are so intense. That is the paradox. That is his genius.Next, Tusa goes deeper into the countryside to find Janáček's house and tries to understand how folk music had such an influence on the composer:
Two evenings later, we were in Janacek's home village of Hukvaldy, surrounded by the wooded hills he loved so much, the 500-year-old lime trees, the old castle on the hilltop about which he lyricised, clean air and bright sunshine that seemed to give him creative energy. We were in the pub Janacek used, Pod Hradem, below the castle. Then, as now, musicians played folk music, violin and dulcimer, perhaps even the one the composer listened to. They sang while they played. In Janacek's time, the musicians were local farmers and peasants, the music preserved and transmitted through the oral tradition. That evening the two performers were computer programmers by day but had learned folk music at the hands of local musicians.It's a long article, full of information, and definitely worth reading.
Available at Amazon:
Leoš Janáček, Kát'a Kabanová, with Nancy Gustafson at the Glyndebourne Festival |
With Tichon away, Kabanicha continues her malicious attacks on Kát'a in Act II. Varvara, the family's foster daughter, tempts Kát'a toward her dreaded sin, by offering her the key to the garden, where she could meet her lover that night. Kát'a wonders what she can safely allow herself to do: look at Boris? speak to Boris? see Boris? If we had any doubt about the sexual nature of Kát'a's religious mysticism, Boris, waiting for her in the garden, tells his friend, "when she prays, she is beautiful." In the third act, everyone is brought together in a cave during the terrible storm (whence the title of the source play), and Kát'a rashly confesses her sin. Distraught over this confession, Kát'a sings an incredible monologue of insanity, in which she obsesses over her guilt, insisting that she should be punished and thrown in the river. The orchestra, which from the somber opening introduction has provided the music of the characters' inner turmoil (especially Kát'a's), is joined in this final scene by the "funeral chanting" of an offstage chorus. Before she jumps into the Volga, Kát'a sings of how "birds will sing over my grave and flowers will blossom." The rotten elders of the opera say equally heartless things when villagers bring the dead body to the cave: Boris's uncle Dikoj says to Tichon, "There's your Kát'a"; Kabanicha says coldly to the villagers, "Good people, I thank you for your kindness." Only the faceless chorus laments the suicide.
Janáček's dramatic economy in this opera is nothing short of remarkable. George Martin observes that this opera's three acts take 15 fewer minutes to perform than Strauss's one-act Elektra. There is nothing vocally or orchestrally that is not absolutely necessary. He relentlessly pursues a sparse vocal style that is sharp and effective. What is surprising to realize about Janáček's operas is that, although the composer died in 1928 at the age of 74, his operas were largely unknown outside of Czechoslovakia for so long. Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle, from 1918, was not premiered in the English-speaking world until 1946 and more widely in the 1950s, and Kát'a Kabanová, from 1921, was also premiered in England and the U.S. in the 1950s. Some of Janáček's other operas took even longer, like the wonderful Cunning Little Vixen (1924 vs. the 1960s), The Makropulos Affair (1926 vs. the 1960s) The Excursions of Mr. Brouček (1920 vs. the 1970s/80s), and the postumously premiered From the House of the Dead (1930), based on the Dostoevsky novel Memoirs from the House of the Dead, which was not staged in the United States until 1990.
