Howling in a garment factory

Janacek's opera Jenufa was staged in Stuttgart

The new opera director of the Stuttgart theater, Albrecht Pullmann, is sweeping with a new broom where in recent years, during the tenure of Klaus Zeelein, the most interesting performances in Germany were made. He began with a remake of the play by the famous Martin Kushay - “Othello” was remade by a certain Lydia Steyer, and the name of the original director disappeared from the poster. The late Herbert Wernicke's production of Actus tragicus based on the spiritual cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach was transferred from Basel, and for the first time a countertenor sang on the Stuttgart stage - singers of this kind had previously been barred from coming here. And now - “Jenufa” by Janacek, which has a difficult backstory. At first the production was offered to a Moscow director, but then Pullman suddenly took it and changed his mind. I decided to transfer the finished product from England to Stuttgart and invited the skilled David Alden, who had previously worked nearby at the Bavarian National Opera. Alden, in the middle of rehearsals, demanded a change in the terms of the release, and “by mutual consent of the parties,” as it is written in official documents, the contract was terminated. Pullman called his favorite Spaniard Calixto Bieito as a lifesaver, with whom they produced more than one performance in Hannover (where Pullman had been a commissary until recently). And then, in record time, the “master of horror” releases the show, and the audience, ready to whistle, howls with delight.

It's not just the audience howling at this performance. Horror master Bieito is also a merciless, wild naturalist, and his method of dangling guts on a stick proved undeniable for revealing the depths of the naturalistic drama "Jenufa". The terrible howl of the Sexton, who killed a baby with her own hands before our eyes, and the cry of this very baby stand in our ears persistently and menacingly, because in the person of the Serbian singer Leandra Overman Bieito found a congenial, selfless, incomparable actress. Not only is she not afraid to be ugly, she gives us, with her emphasized ugliness, undisguised physicality, and lack of confidence, an entrance into a person - anyone, everyone, the most ordinary and the most clarified. In Overman's game we gain a clear view of ourselves. The actress, with her large, but not very well-built voice, with her large and not too attractive body, forgets herself, drowning in Janacek’s brilliant music completely, without a trace.

When Bieito forced his Osmin to cut up a human body and throw a bloody piece in the face of Constanze (“Abduction from the Seraglio” by Mozart) or made Cio-Cio-san a vengeful Medea, who in a rage kills everyone in her path (both performances are Berlin “Komische” Opera"), we, of course, were horrified, but next to the horror there was doubt and the question “why.” Bieito’s reception was just right for the terrible tragedy of “Jenufa,” tick for tick. The black life-likeness worked one hundred percent. Conductor Marc Piolle helped the singer and director to express the inside of the drama fully and large - his arrangement of the score is inspiredly enlightened and full of living feeling.

Next to Overman, other acting works pale in comparison, and even the favorite of Stuttgart, the Dutchwoman with stage charisma, Eva Maria Westbroek, Jenufa, reveals a lack of dedication and head-reflexivity. And the deeply created image of the restless Latsa does not find undeniable life-like, non-stage colors in the magnificently singing Frank van Aken. Leandra Overman brings new standards and new demands to the stage.

As for the performance as a whole, it is interestingly conceived and efficiently staged, although there is an understandable rush in the execution of some scenes. The list of creative units includes not only the authors of sets and costumes, but also those who “remade” them for a new concept. The action takes place in a “post-Soviet” Moravian village, where everyone drinks heavily. True, by the third act things were a little different: the enterprising Caroline opened a sewing factory, and it was here, among the rows of sewing machines and seamstress typists, that the final showdown took place, and it was here that Dyachikha howled in front of everyone. She really howls so that this sound will reverberate for a long time within those who heard it.

Alexey PARIN, Stuttgart - Moscow