Kat’a Kabanova review: Corinne Winters shines in the bleakest Janáček I have ever seen

Unbearably tragic and yet somehow radiant and life-affirming: it’s the fact that Janáček’s opera is both these things at once, which makes it perhaps the greatest of his operas. The tragedy springs from the iron conventions of a Russian rural bourgeois household, in which everyone is forced to live maimed, cramped lives; not just Kat’a herself, but her hopeless, weak-willed husband, who is totally under the thumb of his domineering mother Kabanicha, as is the dissolute old merchant Dikoj. Only the two characters who escape at the end to the anonymity and freedom of the city, Kata’s friend Varvara and her lover Kudrjas, have any hope of happiness.

It’s an opera that cries out for a naturalistic portrayal of over-stuffed drawing-rooms, with servants gliding about bearing samovars, but that isn’t director Barrie Kosky’s way. For him this is a drama not about bourgeois conventions but about the splinter of ice at the heart of the human personality, manifested in the endlessly repeated failures of human beings not just to sympathise with each other, but even to make the effort to sympathise. It is symbolized in this production by the ever-present sight of a stage filled left to right with lines of what seem to be the chorus (but are actually models) in modern dress, with their backs turned in stony indifference. The characters, including Kat’a herself, emerge from and disappear into this uncannily still crowd. The garden in which the two pairs of lovers have their tryst seems like an ancient amphitheatre or prison, devoid of warmth.

Against this portrayal of absolute, cosmic indifference Kosky presents a vision of human warmth which is depressingly one-dimensional in its emphasis on eroticized power. Varvara can be seen as a complex, manipulative character, but as portrayed here by Jarmila Balážová she’s merely an empty-headed sexpot. Kabanicha, played with implacable stoniness by Evelyn Herlitzius, turns out to be a dominatrix, who beats the piteous, trouserless Dikoj, played by Jens Larsen. David Butt Philip as Kata’s lover Boris is vocally impressive but seems more than usually devoid of character. 

Against this drab backdrop the Vienna Philharmonic under conductor Jakub Hrůša play with huge passion, and American soprano Corinne Winters gives a heart-breaking performance as Kat’a, justly cheered by the Salzburg crowd. In the closing scenes, after Kat’a has drowned herself, the chorus (the models now replaced by humans) finally turns to face us. They step forward, the characters step back, and soon they merge into a row of expressionless zombies. It is undoubtedly the bleakest ending to any Janáček production I have ever seen. Kosky’s nihilistic vision may be true to our nihilistic times; whether it is true to Janáček is another matter.

Janáček: Kat’a Kabanova, performed at the Salzburg Festival in 2023, is released on DVD by Unitel Edition