Jenufa review

Composed in 1904 yet resonating all too strongly today, Janacek’s first great opera was conceived in a spirit of resistance to the suppression of Czech cultures and languages by the Austrian empire. Jenufa is no folksy fable, however, but a searingly realistic, morally and emotionally complex portrayal of the brutalisation of women – and their shaming at transgressions of behavioural codes routinely flouted by men.

Katie Mitchell’s production for the Welsh National Opera was first seen in 1998 but has lost none of its claustrophobic power in the hands of revival director Eloise Lally. Dramatic gestures large and small are delivered with care and concision, aligned with the rhythmic subtlety emanating from the pit thanks to conductor Tomas Hanus’ vital, sensitive rendition of the score with the WNO orchestra and chorus. Together they enable an excellent cast to embody the heart-wrenching drama as it unfolds through three domestic settings.

Making her role debut, Elizabeth Llewellyn brings to the eponymous heroine a vocal depth and dignity that shines through her transformation from spirited lover to battered, bereaved survivor, empowered by her capacity to forgive. It’s a crucial dramatic linchpin, around which themes of inner and outer beauty interweave to arrive at Janacek’s all-important human truths. Jenufa is outwardly disfigured by Laca’s knife attack, rejected by Steva as a result and potentially ostracised as an unmarried mother. But the deeper revelation is of a society disfigured by its normalisation of such abuse, yet capable of redemption through endurance and acceptance.

The theme is at its most anguished in the tortured dilemma that drives Kostelnicka to commit her abhorrent infanticide in the name of saving Jenufa from the life of misery that she herself endured. Eliska Weissova brings compelling vocal and dramatic authority to the role and a real sense of horror. Hers is a mirroring, taken to extremes, of the impulsive yet long-brooded passion that sets the tragedy in train when Peter Berger’s furiously violent Laca slashes the woman he loves, but who is besotted with his brother Steva.

Berger manages the transition to tender remorse with great skill, underlining the slower burning cruelty of Steva towards Jenufa – and his cavalier attitude to women in general. Both are tenor roles and Rhodri Prys Jones is wholly believable as the contrasting likely lad who confesses that his renouncement of Jenufa is through fear of her and Kostelnicka.

There’s a kind of justice in the outing of Steva’s fatherhood of the baby, since he loses his new fiancee as a result. Yet there are no tranquil conclusions here, notwithstanding the suggestion of Mitchell’s garden coda in which a young child is seen with the presumably reinstated Kostelnicka. Rather, compelling psychological truths that offer hope despite all.