Kat’a Kabanova
Glyndebourne Festival Theatre, Sussex

SOMEWHAT appropriately in these pandemic times, Leos Janacek’s Kat’a Kabanova centres around the conflict of a liberating outdoors and a repressive indoors. Adapted from Alexander Ostrovsky’s 1859 play The Storm, a hallmark of Russian realist theatre,  it is a pointed criticism of the merchant class.

Janacek’s elegantly romantic yet strikingly modern compositional style excels at conveying the inner conflicts of the characters, while sonically illustrating the town of Kalinov on the Volga river. Despite Moravian-born Janacek’s pan-Slavist ambitions, Kat’a Kabanova has a universal relatability — a loveless marriage, infidelity, family pressures, mental ill-health, abuse and suicide are all in the narrative mix.

Yet Janacek conjures an uplifting joie de vivre in the musical landscape of the opera. The content is dark but there’s a jovial mood after the final act  — life is strenuous and we are all at the mercy of caprice yet there is a beauty in our complexities.