Opera review: Flawed Janáek's Kát'a Kabanova redeemed by glorious singing at Glyndebourne

Kát'a Kabanova is one of the most tragic of all operatic heroines. Married to a drunken wimp who bullies her, while her mother-in-law is considerably worse, she suffers a claustrophobic existence and longs for freedom. This grows worse when the husband, Tichon, has to go away on business and his mother, Kabanicha, demands that he insist Kát'a speaks to nobody and must not even catch sight of another man while her husband is away. Predictably, she sneaks out and falls in love, and it all ends in disaster.

The Czech composer Leos Janáek was superb at producing music to show intense emotions and the sad tale of Kát'a brought out the best in him. With the London Philharmonic Orchestra at full strength under conductor Robin Ticciati, we were treated to a musical experience of great power. The leading roles were sung with matching commitment and potency. Kateina Kniková played the title role with a perfect combination of a glorious voice and expressive emotion while Susan Bickley was terrifyingly convincing as the wicked mother-in-law. Jaroslav Bezina, in the smaller role of Tichon, brought out well the manner in which he was dominated by his mother and in response transferred the bullying to Kát'a.

Of the supporting roles, Rachael Wilson sang the role of the adopted child Varvara beautifully while John Tomlinson delivered one of the very few moments of humour in the opera as Dikoj, Kabanova's drunken lover. A small defect of the opera itself, however, was that it does not really bring out these relatively minor characters as much as it ought, particularly that of Boris, played very well here by Nicky Spence, whom Kát'a falls in love with.

The biggest problem, however, was in Michieletto's over-indulgence in symbolism in the production. His characterless, bleak white set seemed to me to be a good decision, reflecting Kát'a's experience, but the constant appearance of bird cages was considerably overdone. Yes, the poor girl feels trapped like a caged bird, but increasing the number of cages to exemplify her increasing desperation is too obvious. When one of the cages is seen to house an angel and another holds a large rock, I suppose this represented the loss of innocence in the case of the angel, while the rock exemplified the barrenness of Kát'a's existence but this is pushing the birdcage symbolism too far.

My overall feeling was that this was a five-star performance of a three-star production of a four-star opera, which averages out perfectly as my verdict.

Kát'a Kabanova is playing at Glyndebourne on various dates until 23 August.

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