Finally, Bernard Haitink deserves complements for leading such a tidy and well articulated performance.
Jerry Hadley is perfectly unlikable in the role of Steva - a man so shallow that he would forsake the mother of his child over a scar on her cheek his singing is excellent, as is his handling of the Czech language. Although the bloom is gone from her voice, Anja Silja is perfectly cast as Jenufa's stepmother her genuine shame and despair at her murder of Jenufa's child allows their final reconciliation to take on a humanity that it would not if she were played with less sympathy. Jorma Silvasti is similarly believable as the jealous and rueful Laca.
Her suffering and betrayal at the hands of her family, and her eventual forgiveness of those hurts, is extremely moving. Karita Mattila shines in the title role, exploiting every brief moment of lyricism that emerges from Janácek's speech-inflected score.
This live recording from Covent Garden is truly wonderful, and it joins Charles Mackerras' 1982 recording of his own re-construction as a first choice for anyone interested in the work. Here she is revealed as a frightened, vulnerable old matriarch, able to exhibit flashes of human warmth, but damned by her murderous plan to achieve a respectable marriage for her pregnant but abandoned foster-daughter.It says a lot for Janácek's growing presence in the operatic mainstream that Jenufa, which waited more than a decade for its "big city" premiere in Prague, and which existed for many years only in an edited and re-orchestrated version by Karel Kovarovic, now has multiple recordings using the original score - and good ones, at that. Mattila, for her part, delivers an acutely perceptive reading of the role of the Kostelnicka: terrifying she may be, but she also suffers.
Perhaps the wide-open spaces of Michael Levine’s otherwise excellent sets, and her placing on them, don’t help her enough, but when she comes downstage with Laca at the end, her full vocal potential is at last realised in the rapturous redemption the couple undergo. Grigorian superbly incarnates the tragic role of Jenufa, both in her anguished body language and her command of the part’s passion-infused lyricism. The Finnish soprano Karita Mattila, once a glorious Jenufa herself, returns to the Royal Opera in the role of the formidable Kostelnicka (church warden), Jenufa’s foster-mother.Įxpectations were high and very largely they were met. He young Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian has been garnering acclaim at La Scala, Salzburg and Bayreuth in recent years and her debut at Covent Garden in the title role of Janacek’s Jenufa was eagerly anticipated.
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