The Stage

Katya Kabanova

Published Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 11:10 by George Hall

Janacek’s intensely moving opera comes to the Coliseum in a staging by David Alden, who gave the company a searing account of Jenufa four years ago.

Patricia Racette (Katya Kabanova) in Katya Kabanova at the London Coliseum Photo: Tristram Kenton

His design team - Charles Edwards (sets) and Jon Morrell (costumes) - also returns, to shift Katya Kabanova forwards from the 1860s to the twenties, when the opera was written. No major loss there. Morrell’s costumes are good at fixing the characters’ natures in the mind. Edwards’s spare sets provide atmosphere, although the absence of the ruined church in which Katya’s fragile mental state collapses and she publicly confesses her adultery is felt. It’s arguable, too, whether playing the relatively short three-act piece without any interval is a good idea. Somehow the overall impact of the evening is not quite what it should be.

Yet there are many fine things. American soprano Patricia Racette, a star in the US, makes her English National Opera debut as Katya. She registers as a little mature for the part, and her voice is on the slender side - but she’s a strong actress. Stuart Skelton partners her purposefully as her vacillating lover Boris, with John Graham-Hall making a good deal of her craven, cowardly husband, Tikhon. Susan Bickley is properly appalling as Kabanicha, the mother-in-law from hell, and Alfie Boe shines in the secondary role of Kudrjas. Mark Wigglesworth conducts a thrilling orchestral performance, with acute attention to detail. It’s an impressive evening, although not as yet a great one.