Volume 53, Number 14 · September 21, 2006
Nightmare on the Prairie
By Geoffrey O'Brien
Jenufa
by Leos Janácek, directed by Jonathan Miller
At Glimmerglass Opera, in a co-production with New York City Opera, Cooperstown, New York, July 29–August 29, 2006
Leos Janácek's Jenufa is an opera so consciously and thoroughly of its own place that to uproot it might seem an act of violence. The production directed by Jonathan Miller, which opened recently at Glimmerglass Opera, transposes the action from a Moravian mill town under Hapsburg rule to the plains of Depression-era Nebraska. (The precise year is not specified, although the literal-minded may assume that since soldiers are being called up for conscription the time must be after Pearl Harbor.) The result, quite aside from its abundant, indeed overwhelming, musical pleasures—all the more overwhelming because the acoustics and intimate dimensions of the Glimmerglass theater create the impression that all barriers have been removed and that one is simply inside the opera—is a persuasive instance of expressive juxtaposition: two distinct worlds yoked together to yield an alternate and aesthetically convincing reality. It is a sort of rewriting of history. What if this quintessentially Czech opera of 1904 were really an American opera of the 1940s? The effect is anything but frivolous. To drop Jenufa into the middle of middle America provokes a chemical reaction which does interesting things both to Janácek's opera and to America.
Review, 3881 words
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