Search - Leos Janacek, Sir Charles Mackerras, Gabriela Benacková :: Leos Janácek: Káta Kabanová

"The unbearable lightness of ineffable bittersweetness."

Bob Zeidler | Charlton, MA United States | 04/27/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Leos Janacek had an umatched ability for expressing bittersweet sadness in musical terms. It is no wonder, then, that his instrumental music (mostly, his chamber music) was used exclusively for that splendid cinematic version of Milon Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" of more than a decade ago. Kundera's narrative was of a quality such that, had Janacek still been alive at its writing, he would have given it more than passing notice for its libretto possibilities.



Kát'a Kabanová, one of Janacek's final - and finest - staged works, is based on a 19th century Russian play, "The Storm," by Alexander Ostrovsky. Masterfully compacting Ostrovsky's five-act drama into three acts lasting barely 90 minutes, Janacek perfectly captured the fate of Kát'a, a young woman who loved fully but not wisely. An innocent naif in a marriage of unrequited love to a boorish husband (Tikhon) whose mother (Kabanikha) totally dominates him - and everyone else with whom she comes in contact - Kát'a turns to Boris, the nephew of Kabanikha's sado-masochistic partner, Dikoi, for the hope of "love returned." But this is not meant to be; Boris turns out to be a spineless weakling, and fails to rescue Kát'a from her dilemma of "love confounded and unrealized by moral strictures." Kát'a ultimately turns to the only release she can find, throwing herself into the Volga River following her ultimate aria, "But death does not come..."



If this libretto synopsis comes across as all too grim, permit me to say that it is a common-enough theme in dramatic-opera libretti. And it is "rescued" - if in fact it needed rescuing - by some of Janacek's most glorious music. I can't speak for Janacek in terms of which of his mature staged works was his favorite (mine was - and continues to be - "The Cunning Little Vixen"), but it is clear that he poured his "musical heart" into this work. Every note, every strophe, every harmony, every choice of instrumentation serves the dramatic and emotional action to perfection. By the final curtain, one is both in awe of Janacek's compositional prowess and left totally limp by his realization of this moral fable expressed in dramatic and musical terms.



As Kát'a, Gabriela Benackova would seem to be hard-pressed to be bettered; she has Janacek's music (and musical vocabularly) in her blood. (More than two decades earlier, Mackerras had recorded this work with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with the great Elisabeth Sodertrom as Kát'a, but I'm not personally familiar with that performance, and, in any event, would find it hard to believe that Soderstrom's could have been superior to Benackova's performance here.) All of the other principals seem fine, too. And the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra could hardly be improved upon when in such repertoire, particularly under the baton of Mackerras, an "honorary Czech" who studied with the great Vaclav Talich.



The recorded sound is superb as well, and the production is lavishly packaged, with separate booklets containing the cast listing and plot synopsis and the libretto. The former has an interesting essay by David Hurwitz (a frequent Amazon editorial reviewer) which puts the historical placement of Kát'a Kabanová in perspective (including the fact that it was contemporaneous with Janacek's "Sinfonietta," one of his most famous orchestral works [a coincidence that is clear from listening to the opera]). Regrettably, that essay is somewhat diminshed by the presence of a rather large number of typographical errors that should have been caught by Mr. Hurwitz.



But this is a truly minor point; the main point is that this recording is a "must have" for anyone who is a lover of Janacek's music, or of 20th-century opera, of of opera of any time whatsoever. Unbearably beautiful!



Bob Zeidler"

Charles Mackerras ist ein Meister tschechischer Opern

werner.veith@gmx.de | Nuremberg, Bavaria | 03/10/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Zusammen mit einer aehnlichen Einspielung der Plattenfirma Decca zaehlt sie zu den Spitzenaufnahmen des tschechischen Musikdramas Katja Kabanowa. Wer beispielsweise Janaceks Oper an der Bayerischen Staatsoper (Munich) geniesen moechte, sollte sich vorher von den hervorragenden CDs des Dirigenten Charles Mackerras verfuehren lassen."

Almost Perfect, But

Strat Man | 10/16/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The previous review is absolutely right in every detail, with one crucial expection. To my ears, Banackova's voice grows hard and unpleasant when she pushes it above the staff. It's a beautifully nuanced performance, intelligently sung and very well acted. But the voice tends to "hoot" under pressure, and it's enough to distract from the overall effect. In all other respects, this is an exceptional performance. But the recently released performance with Soderstrom singing Katya might make a better first choice for this opera."