Glyndebourne, East Sussex; Ragged School Museum, London
Janáček’s darkest of operas provided a searing start to Glyndebourne’s new season. Plus, spellbinding chamber music from Pavel Kolesnikov, Samson Tsoy and friends
Swirling currents of infidelity, hypocrisy and suicide meet in tragic confluence in Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová (1921). For its first new production of the season, Glyndebourne has turned this darkest of operas into a dazzle of white light and painful lucidity. Negating literal details of Czech village, church, countryside, the director Damiano Michieletto and designer Paolo Fantin have laid bare Káťa’s troubled mental state and translated brutal action into metaphor.
The set looks airy and minimal, Káťa’s sense of imprisonment and desire for freedom achieved by Alessandro Carletti’s intense use of lighting and high white walls that shut out the world. Three standard visual motifs, drawn from references in the libretto, are brought into play: bird, cage and angel. Magritte’s disturbing birdcage paintings, one of which he pointedly called The Therapist, come to mind. By the end, these symbols have multiplied to the point of distraction. This might irritate more had musical standards not been so outstanding in every quarter, steered by Glyndebourne’s music director, Robin Ticciati.
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