Another set of rave reviews pretty much across the board for the opening of English National Opera's revival of Janáček's Jenůfa.
David Alden's staging was first unveiled in October 2006 and won two Olivier Awards, one of them for the performance of Amanda Roocroft in the title role.
It's Roocroft again who wins the chief plaudits for this first revival, though Alden's vivid Personenregie and strong comprimario singers also come in for praise.
All the critics agree that Roocroft's rendition is just as good this time round – indeed, Richard Morrison in The Times suggests that she 'is, if anything, even more mesmerising this time round. Her disintegration from playful and pretty girl to disfigured and stumbling wreck is heartbreaking; her final acceptance of the touchingly steadfast Laca…the more effective for being so freighted with hesitations.' Barry Millington in The Evening Standard agrees, awarding the revival five stars out of five: 'Amanda Roocroft, repeating her previous success as Jenufa, steadily shrivels from a sunny, lighthearted girl to an emotional wreck.' George Hall in The Stage says that 'Roocroft has developed into one of the great actresses on the operatic stage, and her lyric soprano is deployed with thrilling imagination.' And the Financial Times goes so far as to say that her portrayal 'is so truthfully acted that the post-natal gait in Act Two could be for real: the tears are.'
Alden's production, meanwhile, is similarly acclaimed, though it does have its dissenters regarding the updating of the opera to an unspecified late-Communist era. The Financial Times, for instance, says that this is a limitation, describing an 'unhappy match between late communist-era visuals and the nascent capitalist society described by the plot'. Yet all agree that the overall impact of the staging is intense. 'This time around, it's even better,' says The Stage. 'The cast has been strengthened and the impact of the whole is overwhelming.' The Standard says it's 'one of the most harrowing experiences in all opera' and The Guardian says that Alden's work 'ranks among his – and ENO's – finest recent achievements'.
There is a certain disparity between reactions to the performance of Michaela Martens as Kostelnička. The Financial Times describes her as 'the one weak link…she sings well, but the character is basted on rather than felt from within, so that the raw edges never tell', while The Guardian describes her as 'forceful, if wearingly loud'. The Times, meanwhile, says that she is 'credible' but later seems to refer to her singing in particular as 'unremittingly fortissimo, if not actually shouted' (though this extends to some of the other singers, too, according to Morrison). On the other hand, the Standard says that she 'is vocally as formidable as the beehive she sports in the first act.'
The other singers generally come in for praise. Tom Randle's Steva is played with 'dissolute abandon' (Standard), is 'disarmingly attractive' (The Guardian), and his 'energy and dramatic command flesh out a complete portrayal founded on his keen-edged tenor' (The Stage), while Robert Brubaker's Laca is 'sturdy' (Times) and 'ardently sung' (Standard). The Financial Times speaks for most of the critics when saying that 'all the comprimarios are good'.
The Times review is slightly more critical than most, saying that the 'revival doesn't quite grip as the 2006 show did'. Morrison is also critical of 'the young Norwegian conductor Eivind Gullberg Jensen doesn't yet project Janácek's teeming orchestral detail incisively enough. What comes from the pit is too generalised and reticent to match the mega-passions on stage.' Tim Ashley's review in The Guardian praises him highly, however, saying he 'conducts with admirable restraint and inexorable momentum.' Then, too, the Standard describes the conducting as 'sympathetic' and the Financial Times absolutely raves, giving us plenty of encouragement to go and see one of the three remaining performances of this brief revival: '[Eivind Gullberg Jensen's] ideally buoyant, rhythmically alert, liberated conducting…has the orchestra scurrying off in nervous flurries of sound and tracing Janàcek's spasmic ostinatos and pent-up climaxes with lyrical finesse: a sensational house debut for the young Norwegian'
Photos: Robert Workman/ENO
Related articles:
Opera Review: Our review of Jenufa at ENO, March 2009
Interview: Amanda Roocroft on Jenufa, March 2009
Interview: Amanda Roocroft on The Merry Widow, April 2008
Concert Review: Amanda Roocroft in Janacek's Osud at the Proms
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