Julia Sporsén as Káťa and members of the OHP Chorus in Opera Holland Park’s production of Káťa Kabanová, directed by Olivia Fuchs (Photo © Robert Workman) |
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Apr 13 2017
Star rating:
The tensions of small-town life, in Janacek's powerfully claustrophobic drama
Julia
Sporsén and OHP Chorus in Opera Holland Park’s
production of Káťa Kabanová, directed by Olivia Fuchs © Robert Workman |
Creating the right sense of small-town claustrophobia in Opera Holland Park's wide open spaces is quite tricky. Fuchs and Thavoris solved this by covering the stage with azure blue colour for the Volga River, and confining the characters to wooden walkways crossing the water. There were just two acting areas, a bed of reeds with a seat stage left, and a circular platform stage right. This latter formed the Kabanova's house in the first half, surrounded by a movable mesh half-screen which again brought a feeling of claustrophobia. And within these spaces, Fuchs regularly had the chorus spilling across, peering, prying, spying and generally intimidating. In one magical moment, during Boris and Kat'a's Act Two duet Boris (Peter Hoare) walks off the walkway into the 'water', and eventually Kat'a (Julia Sporsen) joins him. This sense of escaping via water created a powerful resonance through the remainder of the opera.
Peter Hoare, Julia Sporsén (Photo © Robert Workman)
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Kat'a is very much defined by her relations with others. The incredibly tense scene where Anne Mason's rigid Kabanicha insisted Tichon (Nicky Spence) school his wife in how to behave when he was away, in which Fuchs used lack of movement and rigidity as much as movement to bring out the tensions in the family. The scene for Kat'a and Clare Presland's delightful Varvara, where the latter was finely unnerved by Sporsen's Kat'a wanting to be a bird. And of course, the glorious double duet which concludes Act Two, where the tense and nervous start of Kat'a and Boris' duet showed Sporsen and Hoare at their intense best, expanding into a gorgeous lyricism whose over intensity boded no good for the relationship. In the final scenes, this lyricism veered into neurosis and Sporsen's solo was profoundly moving. Perhaps it did not sear quite as much as it can, but then that sort of intensity is difficult to bring off in Holland Park's wide open spaces.
Paul Curievici, Clare Presland (Photo © Robert Workman) |
One of the fascinations of this production, where director, movement director and conductor were all women, was that though there was immense sympathy for the female characters the male ones had a depth to them too. This was particularly true of Nicky Spence's Tichon, a complete change from his recent portrayals of Steva in Jenufa at English National Opera and Grange Park Opera. The pull between his wife and his mother-in-law seemed to have paralysed Tichon, Spence's body language was all awkward rigidity and any drama made him freeze (and grab his hip-flask). The final scene in Act Two between him and Sporsen was wonderful in the way they suggested the intensity of the relationship and the sheer impossibility of it too, along with hints (taken from the opera) that Tichon is impotent.
Anne Mason (Photo © Robert Workman)
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Mikhail Svetlov was a wonderfully awful Dikoj, the scene between him and Mason's Kabanicha comic yet disturbing. The smaller characters were all characterful with Laura Woods and Polly Leech as the servants Glasa and Feklusa, (small but important roles), Ross Ramgobin as Kudrjash's friend Kuligin, Ayaka Tanimoto as Zena and Michael Bradley as the boatman, all contributing to the sense of a strongly-knit community and of course the chorus formed an oppressively ever-present backdrop for the drama.
This was very much a strong, ensemble performance creating a real sense of the intensity of Janacek's drama.
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