Jenufa is still Janácek’s most successful and most often performed opera, and the Berlin premiere at the Staatsoper in 1924 brought the work its final breakthrough on German stages. This performance from Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden is “artistically unsurpassable. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, the cast […], secondly: the direction […], thirdly: Simon Rattle, the Staatskapelle and the chorus of the Staatsoper” (BR Klassik). “Simon Rattle revs up the Staatskapelle Berlin with a passion as if he had to fill a melodrama by Giacomo Puccini with bursting sound life” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). “A beguiling mixture of speaking articulation and tonal roundness.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
Jenufa
Leoš Janácek’s third opera, with its echoes of folk music from the composer’s native Moravia, was his first real success and got the name “Moravian national opera”. Besides
this, Janácek’s music has a special quality: while it explores psychological extremes leading to violence and infanticide and lays bare characters’ emotions in an unsparing manner,
no one is judged. Jenufa has a special relationship with the Staatsoper Unter den Linden: when it premiered in Berlin in 1924, its success on the German stage was assured until nowadays. “Rattle reveals a dynamic understanding of Janácek’s musical language in a reading that’s urgent, unsentimental and richly flavoured” (bachtrack.com). The FAZ described the production as “a beguiling mixture of speaking articulation and tonal roundness.”
Janácek, Jenufa
“Sometimes all that is needed is to match the right director with the right piece: Christof Loy and Janácek’s Jenufa are evidently just such a happy case, giving the Deutsche Oper Berlin the rare example of an opera production as intelligent as it is modern” (Opernglas). Jenufa, still Janácek’s most successful and most often performed opera, is a musical study of the social milieu. The psychologically precise role management of Christof Loy (“exemplary”, said the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) results in “a staging with an authentically tragic aura” (NY Times).
BBC Proms 2019: Karina Canellakis conducts Dvorák and Janácek
Janácek’s monumental Glagolitic Mass, steeped in Moravian rhythms, is heard alongside Dvorák’s fairy-tale tone-poem The Golden Spinning Wheel and and a World Premiere by Zosha Di Castri, a new work that marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s mission to the Moon. Karina Canellakis conducts the massed forces of the BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, BBC Singers and soloists in one of the 20th century’s great choral masterpieces. “The performance of the season” (The Times) PROGRAM Zosha Di Castri: Long Is the Journey – Short Is the Memory; Dvorak: The Golden Spinning Wheel; Janacek: Glagolitic Mass