Operatic Lives and Loves, despite Family
Orinda, CA—Give an E for Effort to the feisty West Edge Opera resuming live outdoor opera despite all adversity and fielding a strong central cast to try to make you forget all its shortcomings.
After 16 months with our center stages hogged by virus and little else, WEO celebrated the improving health dip by producing the wrenching drama of love lost, “Katya Kabanova” by the Czech composer Leos Janacek, one of the great late bloomers in operatic history—live, on stage, before live audiences. Even though the plaudits may still be ringing out for soprano Carrie Hennessey in the title role, no one could overlook the clumsy scene changes or an orchestra both ill-tuned and often inaudible at the Bruns Theater, which had never been built with opera in mind. The singers deserved better.
“Katya” features a devout heroine caught in a stifling vise between a milksop husband and his autocratic mother Kabanicka. Katya’s yearning for asserting her persona, so thoroughly quashed, throw her into the arms of the tenor Boris, a brief affair that results in her burdensome guilt complex and near madness, and ultimately tragedy in a watery grave.
Janacek’s tormented music ranks among the stormiest (and loudest) since Verdi, but you wouldn’t know it given the feeble sounds emanating from beneath the Bruns stage, even with the amplification. The singers too appeared to use body mikes to boost the sound. Thus I cannot comment on their volume, but certainly the voices were attractive, disciplined, and seemingly at home with the difficult Czech language. Adding to the production problems was the need for two tenor principals. As for the scenery, a petite stage hand picked up a large paper mache “rock” and lugged it six feet to reflect a change of locale, to considerable audience laughter.
Hennessey’s Katya was compelling throughout, buttressed by her comfortable range and her idiomatic stage manner. Her lengthy soul-searching solo scene was a tour de force.
In the well-balanced cast heard July 23 were mezzo Kristin Clayton (as the harridan Kabanicka), the two tenors Christopher Oglesby (Boris) and Alex Boyer (Tichon), the soubrette soprano Sarah Coit (Varvara) and the veteran character actor Phil Skinner (as the drunkard Dikoj). If it worked so well as a drama of a family in total disarray, credit Stage Director Indre Viskontas, who has a Ph.D. in Psychology.
The three acts were telescoped into two having six scenes, with one intermission, and running time of 2:20. The gypsy existence of West Edge Opera, now in at least its fourth city as home, is a testament to its enterprise. Were the Covid19 not a reality, WEO could be in a real theater. But given the full moon, sylvan environment and ample parking, Bruns has undeniable assets for certain performances.
JANACEK NOTES—His young second wife Kamila spurred the composer (1854-1928) in his late, great creativity eventually recognized in five operas. Until in his 60s, none of the works of Janacek (pronounced YAH-nah-czech, with 2nd syllable the longest) were performed outside Moravia. “Katya” was finished 100 years ago, by which time he was 67 years old.
JANACEK’S OPERA “Katya Kabanova,” in Czech, produced by West Edge Opera with supertitles, outdoors at the Bruns Amphitheater, Orinda, CA July 24, Aug. 1 and 5. For info on this and the two other operas, contact 510-841-1903 or www.westedgeopera.org.
