Category: Reviews – Opera and Ballet

Eternity Opera presents:
GIUSEPPE VERDI – Rigoletto (Opera in three Acts)

Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave (after Victor Hugo)
English translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin

CAST :
Rigoletto                James Clayton
Gilda                       Hannah Catrin-Jones
The Duke               Boyd Owen
Sparafucile            Robert Lindsay
Maddalena            Jess Segal
Monterone            Roger Wilson
Giovanna               Ruth Armishaw
Count Marullo      Orene Tiai
Count Ceprano     Minto Fung
Countess Ceprano  Karyn Andreassend
Matteo Borsa       Chris Berentson
Court Usher          Olivia Sheat
A Page                    Alexandra Woodhouse-Appleby
Gang Members     Chris Anderson,  Paul Bothwell, Nikita Crosby
Richard Dean, Jessica Mercer-Short, Garth Norman

Director:  Alex Galvin
Assistant Director:  Laura Loach
Music Director:  Matthew Ross
Producers:  Emma Beale & Minto Fung
Production/Stage Manager:  Joel Rudolf
Costume Designer:  Sally Gray
Lighting Designer:  Haami Hawkins

Eternity Orchestra
Leader:  Vivian Stephens
Repetiteur:  Catherine Norton

Hannah Playhouse, Wellington

Saturday, 23^rd August, 2019 (until 31^st August)

I can’t think of a better instance of a small opera company bringing forth by dint of its own efforts a production with the commitment and calibre of Eternity Opera’s production of “Rigoletto”, which we saw at Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse on Friday evening. I won’t go as far as proclaiming this “the best so far” of the company’s productions in this venue, as comparisons of that sort are odious for all kinds of reasons – but I certainly felt I’d witnessed nothing better overall than this from the company in the past.

Right from the orchestral prelude’s beginning we were riveted, held by the playing and conductor Matthew Ross’s control of the music’s tensions, the atmosphere dark and un-nerving, everything generated by the insistent motifs and their sharply-focused realisation – the brass were spot-on and unrelenting, the strings and winds coiled and uncoiled with sinister intent, like a snake preparing to strike, and the percussion startled with its force at the climax and its even more disturbing muted after-presence. Then came the stunning volte-face of the “party-music”, the Duke’s palace bursting with sounds of fantastic life and energy – a great beginning! On-stage, I thought the party looked somewhat tentative at the outset, with the chorus members (in modern dress) taking a while to “loosen up” movement-wise  – everybody needed to “hit the ground running” more confidently, and mirror the energies of the orchestral playing and the Duke’s free-wheeling licentiousness – however, to compensate, the singing (in English) was alive and dynamic, which helped it all grow most satisfactorily as the scene went on.

I thought Boyd Owen’s Duke looked and sounded totally convincing from his first entry, emanating self-confidence in all respects, his energies transcending the production’s somewhat bland non-hierarchical appearance – a playboy despot, in fact. His “Questo e quella” (“This or that girl”) had all the casual insouciance of the practised lecher to go with the exuberance of his freely-ringing tones. By contrast, James Clayton’s compelling Rigoletto cleverly “insinuated” his way onto the stage, his almost Dadaist garb mocking convention in accord with his character, and heightening the “edge” of his acerbic exchanges with the courtiers – the character at once provocative, volatile and reckless.

The appearance of Count Monterone (Roger Wilson) an aggrieved nobleman whose daughter had been seduced and abandoned by the Duke was a splendid moment, with the Count’s curse (a stumbling block for most modern adaptations of the opera) here made properly baleful and even frightening by a convincing combination of the singer’s commitment and his would-be victim Rigoletto’s terrified reaction. After a gripping chorus response to this, the voices generating incredible vehemence in their rebuttal of the Count’s maledictions, the Act’s second scene stole in, here cleverly integrating the characters of the killer-for-hire, Sparafucile, and his sister-accomplice Maddalena, among the party-guests, so that they seemed almost like “an enemy within”, rather than ostensibly sinister night-creatures. Robert Lindsay as Sparafucile kept his voice smooth and steady during his confrontation with the jester, allowing the disturbing accompaniment of solo strings and throbbing bass drum to underpin the horror of his glib-toned, but deadly message for Rigoletto, still distracted by Monterone’s curse, but interested despite himself – the scene all the more macabre here, in its manicured, almost genteel aspect!

Clayton superbly laid bare the jester’s character in his soliloquy which followed, reiterating the curse, railing against his deformity and execrating the courtiers who mocked him earlier, before giving himself over entirely to his daughter, Gilda, here sung by Hannah Catrin-Jones with a presence and intensity that ideally matched the vividly-wrought character of her besotted but fearful father.  How fortunate we were to have such a triumvirate of singers in this work’s leading roles! As she did in her portrayal of “Madama Butterfly” last year for the company, Catrin-Jones “owned” the character of Gilda with a vocal “presence” and dramatic totality of commitment that rightly put intensity of feeling before every other consideration, in places even beauty of tone – and in doing so she again won our hearts and sympathies.

The singing and playing during this scene did full justice to the composer’s remarkable combination of quicksilver movement and heartfelt emotion – Rigoletto’s tenderness and anxiety at odds with one another, Gilda’s concern for her father set against her interest in a young man she had seen at church, a secret she shared with the maid, Giovanna (sensitively and lyrically portrayed by Ruth Armishaw), and the young man’s sudden, covert entrance into the courtyard in pursuit of Gilda (the Duke in disguise, of course, astonished to learn that the girl is Rigoletto’s daughter, but unremitting in his efforts to “get the girl”!) – supporting the singers’ efforts all the way was Matthew Ross’s conducting, generating playing from his musicians by turns as thrustful and exciting or lyrical and atmospheric as required.

The “no-holds-barred” scene between the disguised Duke and Gilda was a tour de force of emotional outpouring on the part of both characters, vocal elegance mattering less than the raging flow of feeling, carrying us all along in its flow – what a mountain for singers to climb! – especially on the part of the tenor, with Boyd Owen’s voice seemingly at full stretch in most places in places but his character totally convincing dramatically! Gilda’s well-known “Caro nome” (Dearest name) in the wake of the Duke’s departure restored beauty and elegance to the proceedings, Catrin-Jones’s exquisite singing most sensitively supported by the orchestra, the winds in particular partners in fragrant evocation, despite a moment or two’s imprecision between singer and players towards the end.

Great work followed from the chorus, the nobles gathering, in disguise, to carry off whom they believed to be Rigoletto’s mistress, encountering him outside the house and deluding him into thinking they were playing a trick on someone else! The energy and thrust of the singing and playing carried us irresistibly along to the point where Rigoletto suddenly heard Gilda’s voice as she was “taken” by the intruders, thereupon tearing off his “mask” and discovering she was gone.

More full-bloodedly ardent singing from the Duke at the Second Act’s beginning – what a role this is! – (though I’ve often thought Verdi a little inconsistent in his characterisation, here  – was this genuine feeling for the missing Gilda he was expressing?) Boyd Owen was again unfailingly sonorous and romantic in vocal feeling, his anguish transformed to joy upon hearing of Gilda’s conveyance to his clutches. Rigoletto, by comparison, was all care and sorrow, turning to anger as he revealed to the courtiers that they had stolen his daughter, James Clayton’s vocal range and depth of emotion overwhelming, the flood of feeling generated, together with weeping strings and plangent cor anglais, breaking all hearts! Gilda’s sudden entrance from the Duke’s bedroom occasioned an oboe solo of equal poignancy, its phrases movingly matched by Catrin-Jones’ achingly lovely tones – as befitted one of opera’s most heartfelt scenes, this performance delivered the sorrow and anguish of it all in spadefuls!

Here, too, was amply-realised justification for the sparseness of the set – unobtrusive in earlier scenes, but absolutely perfect in this instance, with shadows as well as “substance” resonating on or in front of both walls so dramatically – as if there was nowhere, emotionally, to hide – incredibly moving, thanks also to the perfectly-judged lighting on those bare walls!

By general agreement, though, it’s the final Act that’s thought to be one of its composer’s greatest achievements – and here it certainly maintained the voltages from what had gone before, if channelling them into more overtly sinister and potentially murderous realms.  Perhaps it was the fault of what seemed an out-and-out marathon of vocal effort by Boyd Owen up to that point of the evening, but his “La donna e mobile” (Women are fickle), felt to me a shade sedate compared with the volatile energies of the First-Act’s “Questo e Quella”, and even the orchestral accompaniment seemed to lack the last amount of “fizz” – however, not so the magnificent Quartet, which followed soon after! –  here, the voices realised as heartfelt and wide-ranging an expression of both individual and concerted emotion as was one’s right to expect, Jess Segal’s Maddalena given her chance to shine alongside the three principals, which her voice managed with great aplomb.

Though everything from that moment onwards moved with the surety and inevitability of a Greek tragedy towards its brutal outcome, the performances had such here-and-now spontaneity, it was as if we were seeing something, however well-known, for the first time and willing against hope the impossible to happen and the guiltless be spared rather than sacrificed. So tense, so charged was the ambience when Rigoletto was left alone with the sack containing what he thought – in fact what he gleefully TOLD us – was the Duke’s body, that when we suddenly heard the latter’s voice singing his “signature tune” offstage, somebody in the audience audibly giggled – not through disrespect, I felt, but obviously out of either shock or sheer release of tension – I thought it a kind of tribute to the performance’s cathartic power, as well as to the production in general, AND to the composer and his librettist (not forgetting, of course, Victor Hugo!).

I’ve heard ample testimony from others since regarding the overwhelming effect of this production upon those who were ‘there”. The three principal singers, those in the supporting roles, both individual and chorus, the conductor, Matthew Ross and his musicians, director Alex Galvin and his assistant, Laura Loach, the producers and their various technicians, all contributed to what seemed to me like a fantastically interactive and ensembled effort, to produce something resoundingly memorable and eminently worthwhile. To hear, then, a whisper, as I did, of Eternity Opera facing the prospect of having to struggle to receive the necessary support in oncoming years for more productions such as these simply beggars belief. Though opinions differ as to the factors that contribute to a “civilised society”, my view inclines towards support for the arts being as necessary for the greater good of humanity as measures which provide for us air we can breathe and water we can drink – a truly humanising kind of sustenance. May Eternity Opera be assured of continuance, to furnish for us more of such sustenance!

New Zealand Opera presents:
GIACOMO PUCCINI – La Boheme (libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, after Henri Murger)

Cast:   Thomas Atkins (Rodolfo)
Marlena Devoe (Mimi)
Nicholas Lester (Marcello)
Amelia Berry (Musetta)
Julien Van Mellaerts  (Schaunard)
Timothy Newton (Colline)
Barry Mora (Benoit / Alcindoro)
Manase Latu  (Parpignol)

Freemasons New Zealand Opera Chorus
Michael Vinten (Chorus Director)

Orchestra Wellington
Tobias Ringborg (conductor)

Director – Jacqueline Coats
Assistant Director – Jesse Wikiriwhi
Set Designer – Rachael Walker
Costume Designer – Elizabeth Whiting
Lighting Designer – Jennifer Lal

Wellington State Opera House

Thursday 4^th October, 2018 (until Oct.13^th)

It may seem a strange entry point for a review’s beginning – but at the opening night of New Zealand Opera’s 2018 season of “La Boheme” in the Wellington Opera House on Thursday last, there was for me, near the Second Act’s conclusion, a “great moment”, whose incredible lyrical surge and explosion of sheer theatrical energy seemed at once to overshadow and enhance the significance of everything that had gone before – this, in a production that had already stretched out before us up to this point a connected array of jewel-like moments, glowing like gorgeously-appointed lights. I’m referring to the climax of the famous Waltz-song sung by the flirtatious Musetta,  with all the opera’s characters at the street-café watching and joining in with her in aiding and abetting her reunitement with her jealous, yet still utterly besotted ex-lover Marcello, every singer holding and thrillingly intensifying their singing-lines right up to the point where Musetta falls once again into Marcello’s arms, and the orchestra thunders its approval! – a moment even experienced opera-goers would die for and at which newcomers to the goings-on would be literally transported!

It was, of course, a moment in which the expressive capabilities of every principal character on stage seemed thrown open – there had already been instances with similar “charge” that had swept things along in the story, though not to quite the same concerted extent. But for me it fulfilled the promise set up by the production right from the curtain’s opening – we were engaged, from the very first strains of the orchestra’s excited, rumbustious ascending phrases, and the bohemian Marcello’s shivering disavowal of his painting of the “Red Sea”, countered by his equally frozen companion Rodolfo’s judgement concerning the cold, idle stove! Each of the voices “sounded” the character so beautifully  – Nicholas Lester’s Marcello muscular and virile, and Thomas Atkins’ Rodolfo lighter-toned but strongly-focused in his upper registers, both characters ENJOYING the text’s wry humour and quicksilver exchanges.

The other two bohemians variously and characteristically made their entrances, the gentle, soft-spoken Colline of Timothy Newton a perfect foil for the vigorous, raconteur-like Schaunard of Julien Van Mellaerts, the four together making a boisterous and engaging quartet, combining sharp-etched individuality with string-quartet-like collaboration, their stage horseplay delightfully choreographed. The four’s concerted treatment of the intruding landlord, Benoit, desirous of his overdue rent (a deliciously self-indulgent cameo by Barry Mora) summed up a whole life-stage of youthful, “devil-take-the-hindmost”abandonment!

Left alone then, to finish an article he’s writing, Rodolfo then, of course, unexpectedly encountered Mimi, a neighbour of his wanting a light for her candle, the character shyly at first, then more impulsively portrayed by Marlena Devoe, her voice having both sweetness and energy enough to convey the often conflicting inclinations which can colour a first meeting. Each singer then “put their cards on the table” with successive arias, both shaping their various outpourings with great artistry, Atkins’ soft-grained utterances at the beginning of “Che gelida manina” gathering increasing heft as he described how his “empty place was filled with hope” (…poiche v’ha preso stanza la speranza….) with confidently ringing tones and a true command of line.

In reply, Marlena Devoe’s Mimi began simply and demurely with “Mi chiamano Mimi”, shyly inflecting her approaches to soaring passages like “that talk of love, of spring” (che parlando d’amor, di primavera…), before building up to her song-bird-like “April’s first kiss is mine….” (Il primo bacio dell’aprile e mio!…) and melting our hearts with her spontaneous-sounding nuances of line and tone. Throughout, the orchestra accompanied with the utmost sensitivity, Thomas Ringborg and his players completely at one with the onstage ebb-and-flow of incident and emotion, and making the most of even incidental-sounding sequences, such as the beautiful colourings from the wind and brass in the passage immediately following the bohemians’ teasing calls to their recalcitrant colleague, about to declare his love to his new-found companion.

Act Two exploded around and about our sensibilities, the stage and its occupants cleverly silhouetted at first then flooded with energy-inducing illumination (a marvellously incandescent effect by lighting designer Jennifer Lal), straightaway depicting a fantastical evocation of a generic nineteenth-century urban scene, which just happened to be Paris.  Director Jacqueline Coats had said she wanted to evoke a kind of timelessness about the story, paying ample attention to the story’s specified time and place, without giving her audience a “too tied up in period” kind of distraction – no small thanks due, of course, to designer Elizabeth Whiting’s unerring sense of character and appropriate costuming. What was paramount here, and something which I strongly connected with amid the colour and energy of the café and its environs, was what Coats called “the way the world is transformed when (people are) in love”. Throughout much of the scene this was poetically and idyllically expressed by Rodolfo and Mimi’s interaction, and, by contrast, tempestuously and abrasively by Marcello and his on-again, off-again sweetheart Musetta (winningly and coquettishly played by Amelia Berry), whose aforementioned “Waltz Song” built up to that overwhelming climax of emotion at the end of the act.

Here, though, as nowhere else in the opera, the chorus was a major player in the action, beginning the action before the bohemians appeared – street-vendors, shoppers, policemen, children, and the waiters and waitresses of the café – with both singing and movement whose energies seemed to fuse with the musical line and sweep everything along in a tide of festive euphoria – a tribute to the expert work of chorusmaster, Michael Vinten.  Occasionally galvanising the action were the antics of one of the vendors, a figure called Parpignol (sung and acted with great flair by Manase Latu), whose presence drew from the crowd, Pied-Piper-like, a stream of children, all following him around in excitement, each child anxious to gain possession one of the bunch of balloons he carried.

Into this plethora of activity strode Musetta, with her unfortunate “sugar-daddy” in tow, an elderly gentleman, Alcindoro (Barry Mora once again nailing” a cameo to perfection). I thought Amelia Berry’s choreographing of her song beautifully done, with the long, sinuous melodic lines accompanying her flirtatious interactions with various partners by way of teasing Marcello and annoying her companion, but also drawing from Devoe’s Mimi an affecting, empathetic vocal counterpoint. As a ruse she finally sent off her elderly swain to the shoemakers to buy a more comfortable pair of shoes, thus freeing herself up to “connect” with the (by now) all-too-willing Marcello. What a scene, and (as outlined above) what a triumph!

Alas, downhill it all went from here, of course (I mean the story-line, not the performance!), as do most “serious” operatic love-stories, firstly into a scene whose bleak, unremitting aspect of emptiness candidly expressed the narrative’s emotional contourings (director Coats paid tribute in a programme interview to designer Rachael Walker’s sense of the work’s overall feeling and her stage representations of it, deservedly so, in my opinion). The characters performed their sad charades by turns, firstly Mimi, made desperate by Rodolfo’s jealousy, and then Rodolfo, equally desperate due to Mimi’s sickness, before they became aware of one another’s presence. Eventually forgetting recriminations, and in the most affecting manner, they sang of their happy times, before agreeing to part “in the spring”, Mimi’s farewell given the most touching of performances by Devoe, voice and “presence” in focused accord. Ironically, their agreement was counterpointed by a furious argument between Musetta and Marcello, one whose resonances spilled over into the final act, as did the more poetic but no less profoundly affecting of Mimi’s and Rodolfo’s.

The reverse parallels between the opera’s opening and that of the final Act were duly and affectingly brushed in, with Marcello and Rodolfo once again alone, each trying to work, but heavily distracted this time round by memories rather than future possibilities. Schaunard’s and Colline’s arrival again occasioned horseplay, but of a more sardonic, even desperate kind, the whole being interrupted by Musetta, announcing Mimi’s arrival and then bringing her in, seriously ill. Though diametrically opposed in feeling and incident, it was here that the resonances of that overwhelming conclusion to the Second-Act came back, in the form of what it had all led to – the same characterful voices (with Devoe and Atkins, as the lovers, particularly affecting), magnificent orchestral detailing and “shaping” of the music, settings of stage and lighting, and costumings that looked so “right”. It all seemed to me at this moment a kind of natural outcome of (as well as a contrast to) that earlier outpouring of frisson during which something ineffably human and heartfelt became transcendent for a few precious seconds!

So, no sentimentality at the end, but instead a heartrending  and truly cathartic conclusion with Mimi’s inevitable, but still shocking death. A memorable and satisfying production, then, with everything in focus, and seemingly “knowing” what it was there for.  I think the production’s success came down to that sense of everything belonging, everything “told” what to do by Puccini’s music. Director Jacqueline Coats knew this when she remarked in the aforementioned programme interview “That’s the power of the music. As a director, it’s your best friend – it tells you everything you need to know”. Well done, NZ Opera!

New Zealand Opera presents:
KÁTYA KABANOVÁ
Opera in Three Acts by Leoš Janáček

Cast: Kátya Kabanová – Dina Kuznetsova
Boris – Angus Wood
Dikój – Conal Coad
Kabanicha – Margaret Medlyn
Tichon – Andrew Glover
Kudrjas – James Benjamin Rodgers
Varvara – Hayley Sugars
Kuligin – Robert Tucker
Glasha – Emma Sloman
Feklusha – Linden Loader

Conductor: Wyn Davies
Director: Patrick Nolan
Assistant Director : Jacqueline Coats
Designer: Genevieve Blanchett
Lighting: Mark Howett
Chorus Director: Michael Vinten

Freemasons Chorus
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

St.James Theatre, Wellington
Saturday 7th October, 2017

(from Thursday 12th to Saturday 14th October)

Janáček wrote to his long-time, would-be amour Kamila Stösslova about his leading character in the new opera he was planning, in 1920 – “The main character there is a woman, so gentle by nature…..a breeze would carry her away, let alone the storm that breaks over her….” This was Kátya Kabanová, or Káťa Kabanová as the Czech spelling has it, the first of three operas whereby the composer sublimated his passion for Stösslova, a young married woman thirty-eight years his junior, portraying her in different idealised ways in each work. Here as Kátya, she was a woman possessed by “great measureless love”, while in The Cunning Little Vixen, the heroine was a resourceful and self-sacrificing wife and mother – and lastly, in The Makropoulos Affair she was a glamorous 300 year-old woman in the grip of an enchantment which had brought her many lovers, but whose spell was about to lose its power and bring her life to its end, resigning her to her fate.

Kátya was based on a play by the Russian Alexander Ostrovsky, The Thunderstorm, which Janáček himself had not seen performed, but being an ardent Russophile was an admirer of writers such as Gogol and Tolstoy (and had already used the work of each of these as inspiration for his own compositions). He was particularly attracted to the character of Katerina in the play, a woman who embodied exceptional goodness of spirit and sensitivity, but was locked into loveless circumstances from which she struggled to escape, a conflict which eventually claimed her own life through guilt and remorse resulting from her own actions. Powerful stuff!

Though not highlighted as such by Janáček, the storm scene that gave Ostrovsky’s play its name was suitably apocalyptic in the opera as well – here, it marked Kátya ‘s breakdown as, overwhelmed by her sense of having irrevocably sinned, she despairingly confesses to her adultery in front of her husband and family and the townspeople, at the thunderstorm’s height. Kátya does have allies, Varvara, her younger sister-in-law (though a foster-child), and the latter’s lover, Kudrjas, a neighbour, though both are simply too preoccupied with one another to give her proper support. But while the domineering Kabanicha (her mother-in-law) is unkindly disposed towards Kátya, and both Tichon her husband and Boris her lover are weak, vacillating men (Tichon subservient to his mother and Boris to his uncle, the merchant Dikój), Kátya’s ultimate undoing is her own sensibility and its fatal interaction with religion-induced guilt and small-town hypocrisies – a world that a contemporary critic had called, in Ostrovsky’s original work, the “realm of darkness”.

At the outset I thought this NZ Opera production’s setting, in rural America (this was a production imported from Seattle Opera), somewhat incongruous in tandem with the sounds of the Czech language being sung, and found the prominently-displayed “stars-and-stripes” and the stage-dominating archetypal white picket fence almost crude and repellent (was the former a none-too-subliminal “Make NZ Opera great again!” message?) – but, in view of those recent populist-driven events in the United States, all too indicative of the upsurge of a contemporary “realm of darkness” as dangerous as any in the past, it all began to make sense as the net began to tighten its inexorable grip on the heroine, putting her salvation beyond earthly reach.

With the opera’s advancement the production seemed to me to shed its parochial blatancies and take us more undistractedly into universal human behaviours, though of the characters only Kátya seemed to grow as a human being – even Kurdrjas’s and Varvara’s decision to elope, made at the height of Kátya’s torment is treated lightly by the couple, more like a holiday than a radical change of direction – “Here’s to a new life, then – and fun!” sings Varvara (and I’m almost certain I heard Kudrjas sing “V Moskvu matičku?” (To Moscow, then?) – though to be fair, it might have been the name of a similar-sounding American city, sung with a Czech accent!).

For the rest, life goes on – Kátya’s husband Tichon remains in thrall to his unrepentant mother, the Kabanicha; and her lover, Boris, having abandoned Kátya to her fate, is sent out of sight and out of mind by his tyrannical, God-fearing uncle, Dikój, (in Janáček’s libretto, to work in Siberia! – though I wasn’t paying enough attention to the surtitles to pick up any further geographical incongruity!). Only Kátya is truly affected, in fact transfigured – but at the cost of her own life. For her, a happy release, perhaps – but for we in the audience, a disturbing human tragedy.

As Kátya, Russian-American soprano Dina Kuznetsova grew on me – at the very beginning she seemed disconcertingly middle-aged, even matronly in appearance, an impression which confused my expectation of her being as a “young wife” to Tichon, her husband. However, as the scenes unfolded, Kuznetsova’s portrayal gathered more and more youthful energy – her impulsive fancies, which she at first expressed to Varvara as wanting freedom to “fly like a bird”, were skilfully metamorphosed into candid revelations of suppressed sexual desires – her descriptions of someone whispering to her at night in her dreams, “like a dove cooing” were very beautifully and tremulously released, conveying desire and guilt at one and the same time with a convincing amalgam of confusion, ecstasy and compulsiveness.

With her husband, Tichon, about to leave on a business trip, her pleas for assurance and strength of response from him were pitiful in their desperation, accentuated by Tichon’s bewilderment at her emotional display, and his dismissive, ineffectual responses, to the point where Kátya’s “goodbye” to him had the air of a kind of death-knell to their marriage. By this time, Kuznetsova had fully “brought us in” to the heroine’s desperate state of being, so that we were practically “willing” her to take up the equally impulsive Varvara’s “setting up” of Dikój’s nephew Boris, by her giving Katya a spare key to the house, allowing her free access to her would-be swain!

Janáček’s music in the subsequent scene for two sets of lovers beautifully contrasted Kátya’s depth of emotion in the throes of her desperation with that written for Kudrjas and Varvara, the younger pair’s exchanges more “folksy” and carefree (echoes of Puccini’s “La Boheme” in places!). For me, this was, as well, the scene where the production “threw open” the opera’s vistas, with backdrops of stars and naturalistic ambiences giving the human interactions a universality all the more telling for its delayed release.

Act Three featured the thunderstorm and Kátya’s subsequent confession, transfiguration and death – throughout, Dina Kunetsova demonstrated just why her performance was a must-see, in every way imbuing the repressed character presented in the opera’s opening scene with desperate, recklessly courageous and open-hearted honesty of expression. The grim, tight-lipped responses of everybody else to the situation and its outcomes were thus exposed as caricatures of human behaviour, and the characters themselves also as casualties of existence, in a completely different way.

Kátya’s allies, Kudrjas and Varvara, were splendidly brought to life by James Benjamin Rodgers and Hayley Sugars, each capturing a distinctive interpretative quality in voice and manner, Kudrjas both a nature-poet, marvelling at the beauties of the passing river, and a man of science, explaining to the bullish merchant Dikój about lightning-rods during the storm – and then Varvara, the Kabanov’s “foster-child” (Ostrovsky’s play had her as Tichon’s sister), and therefore a kind of “outsider”who’s obviously something of a “free” spirit, judging by her encouragement of Kátya to pursue her affair with Boris, and her ready acquiescence with Kudrjas’s “elopement” plan!

Angus Wood as the attractive but self-absorbed Boris conveyed just the right mix of bravado and self-pity regarding his situation to his friend Kudrjas at the work’s beginning, leaving us ambivalent regarding how “true” and “constant” his feelings for Kátya might prove. An ardent lover of Kátya during their garden scene, his protestations were nullified by his subsequent passive, weak-willed reactions to her overwhelming distress, his farewell words to her “What sorrow parting is! – What sorrow for me!” underlining his self-centredness.

On the face of things, the ghoulish pair of the Kabanicha (Kátya’s mother-in-law, played by Margaret Medlyn), and her weak, hen-pecked son, Tichon (Andrew Glover) was largely responsible for Kátya’s life being such a misery, the Kabanicha demanding absolute loyalty and affection from her son at her daughter-in-law’s expense, while expecting the latter to know her place and be subservient to her husband and family. Margaret Medlyn continued her success with the composer’s operatic characters begun in Jenufa with the role of the Kostelnicka, and continued here with the still more odious Kabanicha (a good thing she has in other repertoire undertaken more likeable characters!). Here she epitomised utter ruthlessness, as exemplified by her final cynical dismissal of the onlookers after Kátya’s body is recovered from the river. Her near-complete absorbtion of her son Tichon’s affections is grotesquely echoed in her holding in thrall the otherwise dominating bully Dikój, like a duchess exercising control over her fiefdom!

Where Andrew Glover’s Tichon brilliantly epitomised emasculation with uncomfortable veracity, Conal Coad’s convincingly larger-than-life Dikój was all outward macho aggressiveness (except in the presence of the Kabanicha, who became like his “confessor”). Each of these three characters made up a chilling component of that “realm of darkness” previously referred to, which Kátya sacrificed her life in trying to escape. The other players in the drama, Glasha (Emma Sloman), Kuligin (Robert Tucker), and Felushka (Linden Loader) nicely characterised their brief pre-ordained roles as pieces in this same rigorously-wrought social structure, as did the various members of the Freemasons’ Chorus with their on-the-spot presence in the drama’s framing scenes.

It’s Janáček’s music as much as the dramatic action and the stage characterisations which make the opera such a vivid experience, though – and Music Director Wyn Davies and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra demonstrated with great skill and sure dramatic instinct the score’s powerfully-wrought amalgam of lyricism and dramatic force. From the opera’s Prelude it was Kátya’s music that dominated, all the other characters to an extent drawn into her phrases and themes in a way that reflected their interaction. Whether impulsive (Kátya’s confession to Varvara of sexual longings), repressive (the Kabanicha’s bullying of Kátya via her son Tichon), or despairing (Kátya’s confessing of her “sins” to the whole company), the character of the music held sway, the composer managing to encompass both voices and instruments in a full-blooded panoply of intensities that wrung out the emotions in no uncertain terms – and the players of the NZSO were more than up to the task of rendering their part in the whole with distinction.

As I’ve previously indicated, it was a production that, to me, made increasing sense and gathered weight and pace as it progressed – from Act Two’s Garden scene, and right throughout Act Three, with its thunderstorm, Kátya’s final meeting with Boris, and her suicide, the atmosphere seemed at once to throw open the vistas while tightening the dramatic grip almost to breaking-point – those starlit skies of Kátya’s vision alternated with images of the river’s brooding menace in the wake of the frightening thunderstorm served the drama well, and paid tribute to the abilities of the creative team, director Patrick Nolan and his assistant, Jacqueline Coats, along with designer Genevieve Blanchett and the skilfully-applied lighting of Mark Howett.

Kátya Kabanová has but two days to run at Wellington’s St.James Theatre at the time of my writing this review – it’s great music and theatre, which this production delivers with compelling force and surety.