Obscurantism, past and present....

Damiano Michieletto directs Jenufa in Berlin (***½)

Evelyn Herlitzius as the sextoness © Bernd Uhlig

Author : Jos Hermans

"I don't feel that the play requires you to recreate realism in all its details," says director Damiano Michieletto. Why he tried to lend authenticity to Cavalleria Rusticana by seeking out the local folklore of an Italian village but chooses exactly the opposite path for Jenufa is beyond me. There is, after all, a very compelling reason to do so: a woman who makes her grandchild disappear forever to spare herself and her daughter the public shame of having brought an illegitimate child into the world, is a theme that is virtually unthinkable today.

But in the year 1900, the fate of the unwed mother was indeed still of harrowing topicality. As victims of an intolerant society with a rigid vision of morality, unmarried mothers were sent to the big city as maidservants or they ended up in prostitution. Around the end of the nineteenth century, there were about 19,000 Czech women with this fate in Vienna alone. The cruel fate of illegitimate children is also familiar to us, not least from the biography of Giuseppe Verdi. Filtering out this historical context is the first reason why this production does not work.

Fellow reviewer Detlef Brandenburg of Die Deutsche Bühne sees parallels between Janacek's village community wallowing in obscurantism and the postmodern terror of today's politically correct thinking: "The strictness of political correctness, turns anyone who too obviously violates etiquette into an outlaw, who must stew in a shitstorm." There is enough material in the moral dilemmas of postmodern identity thinking to inspire young Janaceks of today to produce a new Jenufa. Where are they?

The second reason is the constant scenographic thematization of the ice in which the child will find his grave. The block of ice that Steva drags along after the military lottery, and that he starts cutting frantically with a knife, is said to symbolize the child he does not want. A rather incomprehensible idea since Steva does not yet realize that his fiancée is pregnant.

Later, as a metaphor for the sextoness's consciousness of guilt, the ice will descend from the stage tower like an inverted iceberg. In the third act, the sextoness will attempt to purify herself in the meltwater trickling down. In doing so, the director seems to make yet another climate hysterical connection between collective guilt and melting polar ice. It all makes little impression.

Camilla Nylund gave an impressive debut as Jenufa during the streamed premiere of this production in the corona-ridden cultural scene of February 2021. Today, Asmik Grigorian fills her shoes, knitting the wrap blanket for her infant son from a ball of red wool.

Only the most necessary props are present in Paolo Fantin's cube-shaped theater space with double walls in plexiglas: a house altar, a few benches, the jar of rosemary, the ball of red wool. At the start of each act, the characters can be seen as if in a haze of ambiguity, as if all were accomplices in this shadow play of guilt and punishment. A remnant of the corona premiere is the detachment with which the characters interact. The chorus is not a major player in this piece and, surprisingly, sings from the wings while during the stream it did so from the auditorium. Any impetus for folkloric interpretation, as is common with Steva's homecoming from the draw or with Laca and Jenufa's wedding, is thus nipped in the bud. In the end, all the characters are given too little profile.

Camilla Nylund (Jenufa) and Ladislav Elgr (Steva) © Bernd Uhlig

Asmik Grigorian gives Jenufa the youthfulness that suits the character. Her soprano is slimmer than Nylunds who will sing both Brünnhildes next season in Zurich. Even singing in mezzo voce from the deepest position on the stage, the voice still sounded very present. That probably says as much about the acoustics of the renovated hall as it does about the Lithuanian soprano's well-focused voice. Alexey Dolgov as Steva makes a good turn with his ode to Jenufa's apple-red cheeks. There is little sign of rivalry between the two brothers. Stephan Rügamer as Laca grows during the performance. Evelyn Herlitzius did her disarming best not to show the sextoness as a monster. She delivers the most lived-in portrait of the evening but, on the other hand, because of her small stature lacks the natural authority of a Karita Mattila, recently seen in London. The director is clueless with regard to Hanna Schwarz as the old Burya. Victoria Randem is an acrobatic Jano, Evelin Novak a coquettish Karolka.

Thomas Guggeis at the head of the Staatskapelle Berlin made a very good impression. His orchestral treatment has punch and a sense of the rhythmic requirements of the score. The brass section sounded warm and pleasing, the double basses resonated violently in the third act, the viola's solo moment was mesmerizing, the xylophone crystal clear. Dynamically, this reading was extreme only when it had to be or when it could be. Guggeis is going to be Frankfurt's new GMD, so we will be seeing more of him.

Scene from Act III

This was my first visit to the renovated hall of the State Opera. The orchestra pit is spacious, it can hold a very sizeable Wagner orchestra. The ceiling was raised by 5 m so that the room volume has now been increased by 40%. The resulting reverberation gallery with its grid and diamond motifs is a very successful design. It was promised that all this would increase the reverberation time to 1.6 sec (for comparison : in Bayreuth it is 1.55 sec). Whether this figure was met I don't know but both these performances sounded very good with very present sounding soloists and lots of detail in the orchestra.