© 2025 Camilla Greenwell
Claus Guth’s staging of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa was one of the first artistic casualties of COVID-19. It was set to appear at the Royal Opera House in March 2020, but it never did so because the pandemic led to the venue’s closure. It finally premiered in September 2021, and proved to be well worth the wait. If anything, this first revival of the production, by Oliver Platt, is even more accomplished than the initial outing, thanks to the strength of both the singing and the conducting.
The three act opera premiered in Brno in 1904, with the composer having written the Czech libretto himself. It is based on the play Její pastorkyňa by Gabriela Preissová, and is one of the very first operas to be written in prose. Set in a Moravian village in the nineteenth century, the plot concerns a series of tangled relationships deriving from the fact that two brothers died leaving behind both children and stepchildren. The elder brother married a widow, and thus became stepfather to her son Laca before having Števa with her. The younger son married twice, and had Jenůfa with his first wife. All of the wives have also died, with the exception of the Kostelnička who was the younger brother’s second wife and hence is Jenůfa’s stepmother. Custom dictates that Števa alone will inherit the family mill, and that Laca and Jenůfa must consequently earn their livings.
Jenůfa is in love with Števa and secretly pregnant with his child, although he is casual towards her to say the least. Laca is in love with Jenůfa and, being bitter at his half-brother’s favoured position and the attention Jenůfa shows him, slashes her cheek in a fit of rage. Once the baby is born, the Kostelnička keeps it and Jenůfa out of the sight so that no one knows about it. When Števa finally visits, after the Kostelnička demands he take some responsibility, he agrees to provide money in secret, but insists that no one must know the baby is his. He no longer loves Jenůfa since Laca ‘spoiled’ her beauty, and is now engaged to marry Karolka, the Mayor’s daughter.
The Kostelnička’s next hope is that Laca will marry Jenůfa, but when she explains the situation to him, he is disgusted at the thought of taking Števa’s child under his wing. Fearful that Jenůfa will be left with no husband, the Kostelnička tells him the baby is dead and then feels compelled to make the lie true by taking it from the house while its mother sleeps. When Jenůfa subsequently awakes, the returning Kostelnička tells her the baby has died. Laca then comforts Jenůfa, and asks that they spend the rest of their lives together.
On Laca and Jenůfa’s wedding day the following spring, the body of the baby is discovered in the millstream under the melting ice. Jenůfa immediately says the baby is hers, and the village prepares to exact justice against her until the Kostelnička proclaims the crime to be hers alone. Hearing the whole story, Jenůfa forgives her stepmother, and as the Kostelnička is taken to jail Jenůfa and Laca are left alone. Jenůfa says she cannot expect Laca to marry her now, but he replies that he wishes to spend the rest of his life with her.
Karita Mattila as Kostelnička Buryjovka in Claus Guth's production of Janáček's Jenůfa, The Royal Opera © 2025 Camilla Greenwell
Although it is difficult to dispute that the Kostelnička committed a heinous crime, in the context of the opera it becomes easy to understand her desperation. Her fear is that Jenůfa will be left all alone, and the problem is a society that will judge a single mother and the men who will readily turn their back on a woman with a child, including the one who fathered it. Karita Mattila provides a masterly portrayal of the character that cannot fail to arouse some sympathy from the audience, even if it would hardly condone her actions.
Mattila’s mezzo-soprano is extremely sumptuous, but because her sound is always so precise and well balanced it possesses its own sense of tenderness. Her voice can certainly be impassioned, which suggests something about the strength of the Kostelnička’s feelings, but in Mattila’s assumption of the role she becomes a very three-dimensional being. One suspects that her fears over what the community will think about Jenůfa having a child out of wedlock derive, in part, from the moral stances she adopts herself rather than the thoughts of others. However, one could hardly say it is all in her head when it is the case that both Števa and Laca reject Jenůfa when she has a child. In fact, when at the end of Act II the Kostelnička hears Laca saying he wants to be with Jenůfa, when he had been so hostile when the baby was alive, it is not hard to see how she could convince herself she had acted for the best.
Mattila’s acting also conveys the way in which the Kostelnička can be self-absorbed and yet, judged on her own terms, very caring. She makes the act of advancing menacingly on Jenůfa before changing to give her a loving embrace feel highly believable. There is subtlety too because when Števa insults her by saying Jenůfa has become irascible and angry like her, her visible reaction is not large and yet one can still see how she is cut to the quick, especially since deep down she knows she is not entirely innocent of the ‘charge’. Similarly, when she goes to bless Jenůfa and Laca on their wedding day, only to be interrupted by the news of the discovery of the dead baby, the way in which her arms fall slowly from their outstretched position is clearly at odds with the thoughts that are racing through her head at that moment.
Corinne Winters is an extremely persuasive Jenůfa whose beautiful soprano is always very well shaped. Her performance is less focused on going out to meet the audience, and more on drawing us in to connect with her. The approach works well with the staging as Jenůfa often comes across as a small figure of ‘stillness’ within a large and sometimes busy environment. Nicky Spence, who like Mattila appeared in the production in 2021, reveals a highly expansive tenor as Laca and takes us on quite a journey. While we do see a fundamentally good person emerge, Spence does not shy away from showing the far less noble sides to the character that have to be overcome along the way. Thomas Atkins, with his own bright tenor, presents a convincing portrayal of the charismatic, reckless, superficially confident but ultimately spineless Števa. Jakub Hrůša’s conducting is particularly profound as he brings a wonderful clarity to the lines, while still allowing all of the colours, textures and nuances that are inherent in the score to come to the fore.
Corinne Winters as Jenůfa in Claus Guth's production of Janáček's Jenůfa, The Royal Opera © 2025 Camilla Greenwell
The evening is also aided by the strength of the production itself. Michael Levine’s set is geared less towards specifying a particular time and place than to conveying a sense of what it is like to live and work in a close-knit village. All of the action occurs in the same box-like area consisting of monochrome shades, and every time the curtain rises the initial action is revealed through a cage-like wall, leaving us in no doubt as to how claustrophobic the place feels.
The people’s homes are represented by a series of identical spaces that line the set’s three walls. Each contains a bed, table and chair as well as a man and a woman, and as the central action takes place we see, for example, the women peeling potatoes or making beds. It makes sense because most mill workers would probably have lived in such Spartan mill lodgings. More importantly it blurs the line between public and private space as the community is essentially on the stage for the entire first act, even when the central characters would normally be alone, thus suggesting that nothing is truly private.
Although the degree of stylisation that is brought to the staging as a result of this is generally a positive, it can occasionally see insufficient panache applied to the proceedings. When Števa leads everyone in drunken singing and dancing the men do not burst on as a ‘rabble’ but come from the houses on the three sides of the stage, setting the tone for the entire routine by making it feel just a little too orderly. As a result, there is an insufficient sense of chill when the Kostelnička appears and scolds them for their antics because the scene has not built up a sufficiently intoxicating head of steam. Nevertheless, after she has done so, everyone retires back to their own house so that we see a man and a woman in each, looking exactly like those to the left and right of them. The conclusion in this context might almost be that if you live a quiet and uneventful life, simply blending in with those around you, then you are lucky.
If all this suggests there is some order in the society, Act II reveals just how fragile it is. The main action takes place in a cage, made from all of the bedsteads seen in Act I pushed together, which represents the room in which the Kostelnička is keeping Jenůfa and the baby out of sight. The mattresses have been thrown in a huge pile, suggesting that what order existed before has now broken down. The baby is described as wearing a red bonnet, and during the scene a child walks across the stage splattered in the same coloured blood, making the baby’s subsequent ‘sacrifice’ feel Christ-like. A figure dressed as a raven perches on the cage, creating a wonderful shadow on the wall, while all of the women surround the central scene wearing black bonnets that also suggest ravens. When Jenůfa sings her ‘prayer’ they attempt to climb the wall, though whether they are reaching for the higher, spiritual ground that her words inspire, or are desperately trying to escape their present situation, remains ambiguous.
Although Act III includes bloodthirsty crowds, overall it is more sparsely populated and sees flowers strewn across the floor, which Laca scoops a handful of to offer Jenůfa. In fact, just before the end we have roughly the same number of people on the stage as in the first scene, except that this time they really are alone as no chorus surrounds them. This helps us to home in on the emotions of the individuals involved, while the ending does this even more by placing Jenůfa and Laca right at the front of the stage so that we focus solely on them. The consequence is that a pleasing level of understatement is brought to the proceedings, and it makes this Jenůfa feel as emotionally intense as ever.
by Sam Smith
Jenůfa | 15 January - 1 February 2025 | Royal Ballet and Opera, Covent Garden
the 17 of January, 2025 | Print
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