Boston Lyric Opera's Katya Kabanova

Leon Janacek Music Not Heard Often Enough

By: David Bonetti - Mar 18, 2015

Young lovers Vanya Kudrjasch (Omar Najmi) and Varvara (Sandra Piques Eddy) enjoy a stolen moment together.(All photos by Eric Antoniou.)

Vanya Kudrjasch (Omar Najmi) listens to his friend Boris Grigoreyich (Raymond Very) lament his constricted life under the thumb of his mean-spirited uncle.

Katya Kabanova (Elaine Alvarez) pours her heart out.

Katya (Elaine Alvarez) and her confidante Varvara (Sandra Piques Eddy)

Katya's husband Tichon Kabanov (Alan Schneider) covers her body after it has been pulled out of the Volga.

BLO music director David Angus rehearses the orchestra.

Katya Kabanova
Music by Leos Janacek
Libretto by Vincenc Cervinka, based on the novel “The Storm” by A.N. Ostrovsky
First performance, Brno, Czechoslovakia, 1921
Boston Lyric Opera
Shubert Theatre, Boston
March 13, 15, 18, 20 & 22, 2015
Given in an English translation in a revised performance version by Sir Charles Mackerras
An Opera North (U.K.) production
Boston Lyric Opera Orchestra and Boston Lyric Opera Chorus

Conductor: David Angus
Stage director: Tim Albery
Set and costume designer: Hildegard Bechtler
Lighting designer: Peter Mumford
Cast: Elaine Alvarez, soprano (Katya Kabanova); Raymond Very, tenor (Boris Grigoryevich); Elizabeth Byrne, soprano (Kabanicha); Sandra Piques Eddy, mezzo-soprano (Varvara); Alan Schneider, tenor (Tichon Kabanov); Omar Najmi, tenor (Vanya Kudrjasch); James Demler, bass-baritone (Dikoy); Chelsea Basler, soprano (Glascha); Heather Gallagher, mezzo-soprano (Fekluscha); David McFerrin, baritone (Kuligin)

Because of a constellation of factors – recordings that explore operatic byways, DVDs, the introduction of super-titles, the growing diversity and sophistication of the opera audience, the fall of the Soviet Union – the opera landscape has expanded dramatically in recent years. What used to be dominated by a few masterpieces from Mozart to Puccini and Richard Strauss now ranges from Monteverdi to John Adams, Thomas Adès and Kaija Saariaho.

Operas from countries with languages that are not widely spoken outside their own lands, especially those from Eastern Europe, are among the beneficiaries of the new order. Operas in Italian, German and French are now joined by those in Russian and Czech on world stages. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave the local premiere of Polish composer Karol Szymanowski’s “King Roger,” which revealed itself to be an exotic fin-de-siècle masterpiece, its decadent perfume saturating the audience alongside the orchestra’s shimmering strings.

Perhaps no composer has more benefited from the expanded repertoire than Czech composer Leos Janacek (1854-1928), five of whose late works are now part of the international opera repertory. And let me add that international opera audiences have equally benefited from getting to hear his distinctive, nature-steeped sound world and his embrace of stories that range from sci-fi fantasy (“The Makropulos Affair”), to folklore (“The Cunning Little Vixen”) to verismo-style realism (“Jenufa” and “Katya Kabanova.”)

Janacek’s work has been slow to come to Boston, so one can only praise Boston Lyric Opera for bringing, arguably, his masterpiece to town. (In my view, its rival for that honor is “Jenufa.”) Years ago Sarah Caldwell put on “The Makropulos Affair” in a cheesy production that was redeemed by casting the incomparable singing actress Anja Silja as Emilia Marty, a 300-year old woman who is finally facing death. (I heard Silja several years later at the Glyndebourne Festival in England tear up the stage as the Kostelnicka in “Jenufa,” stealing the opera from the young woman who was the title character. And only to finish the Silja digression, after the point most singers have retired I heard her sing Herodias in “Salome” at Covent Garden, seemingly basing her louche character on Marianne Faithfull.) One can only regret that Caldwell didn’t mount productions of either “Jenufa” or “Katya Kabanova,” both of which would have suited her adventurous tastes.

In “Katya” Janacek tells a rather simple tale of a young woman (Katya) in the Russian provinces married to a wimp (Tichon) dominated by his sadistic mother (Kabanicha), who treats her as little more than chattel. She longs to escape and falls in love with another man (Boris) with whom she has exchanged glances only once, who remarkably returns her infatuation. However, he is sent away for work by his irascible uncle (Dikoy) and is unable to save her. Having confessed her sin to her husband and his mother, she throws herself into the Volga River, which runs by the house and is a major character in the work. As a drama it is as passionate and fatalistic as something out of his Italian contemporaries Leoncavallo and Mascagni, although, of course, Janacek’s musical influences were northern and eastern European. Wagner, Strauss, the Russians and his Czech forebears are all there, although his music is hardly derivative – everything he wrote bears his own distinctive stamp. You can tell it the minute you first hear it.

Janacek explored the role of woman in the modern world in a way his Mediterranean counterparts, who were focused on the role of fate in human relations and the age-old passions between man and woman that lead to disaster as much as joy, did not. Katya is as oppressed within her family as a serf under the dominion of a powerful landowner. But rather than accept her fate, she resists, although she lacks the resolve to escape, as her younger, less tradition-bound step-sister (Varvara) and her beau (Vanya Kudrjasch) do. In her always excellent program notes, most of which are view on the www.blo.org blog, BLO dramaturg Magda Romanska writes, citing scholar Larry Woolf, that alienation and adultery in the provinces was an important theme in modernist literature, dating back to Flaubert’s ‘Madame Bovary.’ You might add that suicide was often the finale to a life that pushed boundaries without breaking them: Emma Bovary, Katya Kabanova and Anna Karenina were all victims of rising hopes that hadn’t yet crested. (Although Anna was hardly a provincial – even women in the most sophisticated circles of the time lacked personal freedom, as they often do today.)

The BLO realized the drama reasonably well, although there was a big hole at its center. It made a good decision, probably passed on from Opera North, the opera’s original producer, to present the hour and 40-minute work without break, which emphasized the relentlessness of the plot, but then it fudged it by including pauses for scene changes that went on so long to break the spell.

Hildegard Bechtler’s sets and costumes were dour and dreary, all muted dark colors, grays, blues and blacks, which were appropriate for both the rural Russian setting and the story. But her failure to include the river, which runs by the Kabanov household and plays such an important part in the story and the music, until the very last scene, was a mistake and a missed opportunity. Like the Mississippi in “Show Boat,” the Volga just keeps a-rollin’ along.

Tim Albery’s stage direction was subtle and thorough – every moment was considered from a theatrical point of view. And the cast responded to his lead: they were alive in every gesture and movement.

BLO music director David Angus made the most of his muffled orchestra, stifled once again by the Shubert’s acoustical inadequacies. I’m sure it all sounded fabulous in the pit, but for those in the audience, the fullness of the sound Janacek created and you sensed that Angus was bringing forth was muted. Still, the overture, with its evocation of the Volga, quiet, slow and gentle at the start, more turbulent later, suggesting from the start the heroine’s fate, was masterfully done. Angus is excellent at creating tonal color. The greatness of Janacek’s genius is in the richness of his orchestrations, and his subtleties were lost in the Shubert, which was never intended to be an opera house.

The cast ranged from excellent to not so good.

As Varvara, the foster child in the Kabanov household, mezzo-soprano Sandra Piques Eddy was in fine voice and dramatically brought forth the vivacity of her character. Girlish, perky, effervescent, but always committed to her independence, she was the only member of the emotionally claustrophobic family willing to escape her fate by fleeing to Moscow. (The good news is that the BLO has cast her next season as Charlotte in Massenet’s “Werther,” one of the great mezzo roles of the romantic era.) Varvara’s co-conspirator is her lover Vanya Kudrasch, sung by tenor Omar Najmi, a members of the BLO’s admirable emerging artist program. Najmi has appeared in several BLO productions in recent years in small roles in which he didn’t get a chance to shine. Here he did, and he was ready for the spotlight. He and Eddy made a lovely couple, the only ray of hope in an otherwise bleak drama.

In the role of Boris, who seduced and abandons Katya, tenor Raymond Very was sweet-voiced, one of the few singers whose English was so clear you didn’t have to revert to the supertitles.

Soprano Elizabeth Byrne mostly barked as Kabanicha, the witch- like matriarch, which was appropriate for her role. (In one of her program notes, Romanska informs us that her name translates to “an old and mean wild sow.”) But dramatically, she almost stole the show. In Act II, when she and the equally disagreeable Dikoy, scourge of his nephew Boris (sung gruffly by bass-baritone James Demler) indulge in a sado-masochistic rite - “treat me badly,” he begs her – she shows her only moment of tenderness in the opera. (It’s a Slavic thing, you wouldn’t understand.)

In smaller roles, Chelsea Basler, Heather Gallagher, Alan Schneider (as Tichon, Katya’s hapless husband) and David McFerrin were all fine.

The major hole in the production was the title character of Katya. Soprano Elaine Alvarez was a good actress who showed understanding of and commitment to her role. But she was totally miscast, a mind-boggling failure of the BLO, which also raises questions about her own understanding of her voice and its range and limitations. According to her bio provided by the BLO, she has sung such Puccini roles as Mimi in “La Boheme” in major houses in Chicago, Bordeaux and Frankfurt, as Magda in “La Rondine” in Frankfurt and Leipzig, and as Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata” in Munich and Leipzig. They are lyric soprano roles (Violetta is a little more complex), but Katya requires a heavier more dramatic soprano than she possesses. Perhaps Alvarez was using the BLO as a try-out house as her voice transitions, but it was an experiment that didn’t do her or the BLO any favors.

She had her affecting moments. In the first act, she sings about once feeling as free as a bird but now feels caged. Her dreamy evocation of the past recalls Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville, Summer of 1915,” and she puts it over because it relies on the lyric soprano voice. Later, in her duet with Boris in the garden as they walk off to commit their “sin,” they indulge in an almost Puccinian duet that she handles with little problem.

But for most of the opera, at which she is central stage, she forces her voice and her evident effort puts a damper on the emotional impact of the work. Together with the muffled orchestra, her performance dooms the production. The final scene when she walks into the Volga, which is finally represented by a projection, calls for Straussian lusciousness, effortless soaring high notes that grab your heart. The effect should be emotionally devastating. But with her forced and thin high notes Alvarez leaves you cold. The always-enthusiastic BLO audience was subdued in its response. This production will, alas, probably set back the cause of Janacek in Boston in the immediate future. (Can we hope for Andris Nelsons and the BSO to come to the rescue?)

In sum, despite its virtues, a disappointing evening.

The BLO has announced its 2015/2016 season. It will open in October with Puccini’s “La Boheme,” starring Kelly Kaduce, a favorite in St. Louis, as Mimi and Jesus Garcia as Rodolfo. In November, it will present its annual off-site Annex production, this year Philip Glass’s “In the Penal Colony,” based on a story by Kafka. It will feature two singers from the emerging artists program, Neal Ferreira and David McFerrin. After a long winter break, the BLO returns in March with Massenet’s “Werther,” which will star Joseph Kaiser as Werther as well as Sandra Piques Eddy as Charlotte. Finally, in late April, it closes the season with Franz Lehar’s operetta, “The Merry Widow,” with Susanna Phillips and Roger Honeywell.

And this season’s final presentation is coming up – from May 1 to 10, the company will mount Mozart’s ever-popular “Don Giovanni.”

“Katya Kabanova”

Music by Leos Janacek

Libretto by Vincenc Cervinka, based on the novel “The Storm” by A.N. Ostrovsky

First performance, Brno, Czechoslovakia, 1921

Boston Lyric Opera

Shubert Theatre, Boston

March 13, 15, 18, 20 & 22, 2015

Given in an English translation in a revised performance version by Sir Charles Mackerras

An Opera North (U.K.) production

Boston Lyric Opera Orchestra and Boston Lyric Opera Chorus

Conductor: David Angus

Stage director: Tim Albery

Set and costume designer: Hildegard Bechtler

Lighting designer: Peter Mumford

Cast: Elaine Alvarez, soprano (Katya Kabanova); Raymond Very, tenor (Boris Grigoryevich); Elizabeth Byrne, soprano (Kabanicha); Sandra Piques Eddy, mezzo-soprano (Varvara); Alan Schneider, tenor (Tichon Kabanov); Omar Najmi, tenor (Vanya Kudrjasch); James Demler, bass-baritone (Dikoy); Chelsea Basler, soprano (Glascha); Heather Gallagher, mezzo-soprano (Fekluscha); David McFerrin, baritone (Kuligin)

Because of a constellation of factors – recordings that explore operatic byways, DVDs, the introduction of super-titles, the growing diversity and sophistication of the opera audience, the fall of the Soviet Union – the opera landscape has expanded dramatically in recent years. What used to be dominated by a few masterpieces from Mozart to Puccini and Richard Strauss now ranges from Monteverdi to John Adams, Thomas Adès and Kaija Saariaho.

Operas from countries with languages that are not widely spoken outside their own lands, especially those from Eastern Europe, are among the beneficiaries of the new order. Operas in Italian, German and French are now joined by those in Russian and Czech on world stages. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave the local premiere of Polish composer Karol Szymanowski’s “King Roger,” which revealed itself to be an exotic fin-de-siècle masterpiece, its decadent perfume saturating the audience alongside the orchestra’s shimmering strings.

Perhaps no composer has more benefited from the expanded repertoire than Czech composer Leos Janacek (1854-1928), five of whose late works are now part of the international opera repertory. And let me add that international opera audiences have equally benefited from getting to hear his distinctive, nature-steeped sound world and his embrace of stories that range from sci-fi fantasy (“The Makropulos Affair”), to folklore (“The Cunning Little Vixen”) to verismo-style realism (“Jenufa” and “Katya Kabanova.”)

Janacek’s work has been slow to come to Boston, so one can only praise Boston Lyric Opera for bringing, arguably, his masterpiece to town. (In my view, its rival for that honor is “Jenufa.”) Years ago Sarah Caldwell put on “The Makropulos Affair” in a cheesy production that was redeemed by casting the incomparable singing actress Anja Silja as Emilia Marty, a 300-year old woman who is finally facing death. (I heard Silja several years later at the Glyndebourne Festival in England tear up the stage as the Kostelnicka in “Jenufa,” stealing the opera from the young woman who was the title character. And only to finish the Silja digression, after the point most singers have retired I heard her sing Herodias in “Salome” at Covent Garden, seemingly basing her louche character on Marianne Faithfull.) One can only regret that Caldwell didn’t mount productions of either “Jenufa” or “Katya Kabanova,” both of which would have suited her adventurous tastes.

In “Katya” Janacek tells a rather simple tale of a young woman (Katya) in the Russian provinces married to a wimp (Tichon) dominated by his sadistic mother (Kabanicha), who treats her as little more than chattel. She longs to escape and falls in love with another man (Boris) with whom she has exchanged glances only once, who remarkably returns her infatuation. However, he is sent away for work by his irascible uncle (Dikoy) and is unable to save her. Having confessed her sin to her husband and his mother, she throws herself into the Volga River, which runs by the house and is a major character in the work. As a drama it is as passionate and fatalistic as something out of his Italian contemporaries Leoncavallo and Mascagni, although, of course, Janacek’s musical influences were northern and eastern European. Wagner, Strauss, the Russians and his Czech forebears are all there, although his music is hardly derivative – everything he wrote bears his own distinctive stamp. You can tell it the minute you first hear it.

In “Katya,” Janacek explored the role of woman in the modern world in a way his Mediterranean counterparts, who were focused on the role of fate in human relations and the age-old passions between man and woman that lead to disaster as much as joy, did not. Katya is as oppressed within her family as a serf under the dominion of a powerful landowner. But rather than accept her fate, she resists, although she lacks the resolve to escape, as her younger, less tradition-bound step-sister (Varvara) and her beau (Vanya Kudrjasch) do. In her always excellent program notes, most of which are view on the www.blo.org blog, BLO dramaturg Magda Romanska writes, citing scholar Larry Woolf, that alienation and adultery in the provinces was an important theme in modernist literature, dating back to Flaubert’s ‘Madame Bovary.’ You might add that suicide was often the finale to a life that pushed boundaries without breaking them: Emma Bovary, Katya Kabanova and Anna Karenina were all victims of rising hopes that hadn’t yet crested. (Although Anna was hardly a provincial – even women in the most sophisticated circles of the time lacked personal freedom, as they often do today.)

The BLO realized the drama reasonably well, although there was a big hole at its center. It made a good decision, probably passed on from Opera North, the opera’s original producer, to present the hour and 40-minute work without break, which emphasized the relentlessness of the plot, but then it fudged it by including pauses for scene changes that went on so long to break the spell.

Hildegard Bechtler’s sets and costumes were dour and dreary, all muted dark colors, grays, blues and blacks, which were appropriate for both the rural Russian setting and the story. But her failure to include the river, which runs by the Kabanov household and plays such an important part in the story and the music, until the very last scene, was a mistake and a missed opportunity. Like the Mississippi in “Show Boat,” the Volga just keeps a-rollin’ along.

Tim Albery’s stage direction was subtle and thorough – every moment was considered from a theatrical point of view. And the cast responded to his lead: they were alive in every gesture and movement.

BLO music director David Angus made the most of his muffled orchestra, stifled once again by the Shubert’s acoustical inadequacies. I’m sure it all sounded fabulous in the pit, but for those in the audience, the fullness of the sound Janacek created and you sensed that Angus was bringing forth was muted. Still, the overture, with its evocation of the Volga, quiet, slow and gentle at the start, more turbulent later, suggesting from the start the heroine’s fate, was masterfully done. Angus is excellent at creating tonal color. The greatness of Janacek’s genius is in the richness of his orchestrations, and his subtleties were lost in the Shubert, which was never intended to be an opera house.

The cast ranged from excellent to not so good.

As Varvara, the foster child in the Kabanov household, mezzo-soprano Sandra Piques Eddy was in fine voice and dramatically brought forth the vivacity of her character. Girlish, perky, effervescent, but always committed to her independence, she was the only member of the emotionally claustrophobic family willing to escape her fate by fleeing to Moscow. (The good news is that the BLO has cast her next season as Charlotte in Massenet’s “Werther,” one of the great mezzo roles of the romantic era.) Varvara’s co-conspirator is her lover Vanya Kudrasch, sung by tenor Omar Najmi, a members of the BLO’s admirable emerging artist program. Najmi has appeared in several BLO productions in recent years in small roles in which he didn’t get a chance to shine. Here he did, and he was ready for the spotlight. He and Eddy made a lovely couple, the only ray of hope in an otherwise bleak drama.

In the role of Boris, who seduced and abandons Katya, tenor Raymond Very was sweet-voiced, one of the few singers whose English was so clear you didn’t have to revert to the supertitles.

Soprano Elizabeth Byrne mostly barked as Kabanicha, the witch- like matriarch, which was appropriate for her role. (In one of her program notes, Romanska informs us that her name translates to “an old and mean wild sow.”) But dramatically, she almost stole the show. In Act II, when she and the equally disagreeable Dikoy, scourge of his nephew Boris (sung gruffly by bass-baritone James Demler) indulge in a sado-masochistic rite - “treat me badly,” he begs her – she shows her only moment of tenderness in the opera. (It’s a Slavic thing, you wouldn’t understand.)

In smaller roles, Chelsea Basler, Heather Gallagher, Alan Schneider (as Tichon, Katya’s hapless husband) and David McFerrin were all fine.

The major hole in the production was the title character of Katya. Soprano Elaine Alvarez was a good actress who showed understanding of and commitment to her role. But she was totally miscast, a mind-boggling failure of the BLO, which also raises questions about her own understanding of her voice and its range and limitations. According to her bio provided by the BLO, she has sung such Puccini roles as Mimi in “La Boheme” in major houses in Chicago, Bordeaux and Frankfurt, as Magda in “La Rondine” in Frankfurt and Leipzig, and as Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata” in Munich and Leipzig. They are lyric soprano roles (Violetta is a little more complex), but Katya requires a heavier more dramatic soprano than she possesses. Perhaps Alvarez was using the BLO as a try-out house as her voice transitions, but it was an experiment that didn’t do her or the BLO any favors.

She had her affecting moments. In the first act, she sings about once feeling as free as a bird but now feels caged. Her dreamy evocation of the past recalls Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville, Summer of 1915,” and she puts it over because it relies on the lyric soprano voice. Later, in her duet with Boris in the garden as they walk off to commit their “sin,” they indulge in an almost Puccinian duet that she handles with little problem.

But for most of the opera, at which she is central stage, she forces her voice and her evident effort puts a damper on the emotional impact of the work. Together with the muffled orchestra, her performance dooms the production. The final scene when she walks into the Volga, which is finally represented by a projection, calls for Straussian lusciousness, effortless soaring high notes that grab your heart. The effect should be emotionally devastating. But with her forced and thin high notes Alvarez leaves you cold. The always-enthusiastic BLO audience was subdued in its response. This production will, alas, probably set back the cause of Janacek in Boston in the immediate future. (Can we hope for Andris Nelsons and the BSO to come to the rescue?)

In sum, despite its virtues, a disappointing evening.

The BLO has announced its 2015/2016 season. It will open in October with Puccini’s “La Boheme,” starring Kelly Kaduce, a favorite in St. Louis, as Mimi and Jesus Garcia as Rodolfo. In November, it will present its annual off-site Annex production, this year Philip Glass’s “In the Penal Colony,” based on a story by Kafka. It will feature two singers from the emerging artists program, Neal Ferreira and David McFerrin. After a long winter break, the BLO returns in March with Massenet’s “Werther,” which will star Joseph Kaiser as Werther as well as Sandra Piques Eddy as Charlotte. Finally, in late April, it closes the season with Franz Lehar’s operetta, “The Merry Widow,” with Susanna Phillips and Roger Honeywell.

And this season’s final presentation is coming up – from May 1 to 10, the company will mount Mozart’s ever-popular “Don Giovanni.”