The San Francisco Opera's production of Janacek's "Jenufa," as seen at
today's matinee, established a new standard of "uneven."

What can you say about something with a glorious, impeccable performance
by Patricia Racette in the title role - and pretty much nothing otherwise?
Even in a house where Soderstrom and Benackova sang the role before,
Racette's soaring vocal performance and compelling, ever-so-right dramatic
work were to be treasured.  In a complex, well-shaded, musically superb
portrayal, Racette offered everything I missed from the rest of the cast,
especially in the vocal department.

Jay Hunter Morris's Steva and Richard Berkeley-Steele's Laca were
near-inaudible.  Young Greta Feeney stood out in the throwaway role of
Jano simply because she SANG.  Helga Dernesch, once a great singer, should
not sing anymore, not even the grandmother's role.

But, far and away the worst thing in this production or just about
anything else in local memory since Schnaut's Turandot - Kathryn Harries'
Kostelnicka.  She took one of the greatest, most complex roles in all opera
and presented it as a caricature of a hysterical scarecrow.  That, and a
voice peeling the paint off Alison Chitty's curiously palatial peasant
houses.  Racette, as I said, stood up to the tough challenge of her
predecessors in the role, but the mind reels when considering that Harries
needs to be compared with Dalis, Jurinac and, saints preserve us!, Rysanek!

Kostelnicka is at least as important in the work as Jenufa - and a
more intriguing, demanding role - but Harries presented the character as
a cartoon, ridiculously rigid, unchanging, unvaried.  Even in the enormous
human drama of the second act, when the character sacrifices her own
salvation in a hideous act for the sake of her daughter, Harries was still
playing the Wicked Witch of Moravia.  On her way out the door to drown her
grandchild, Harries turned around and addressed the audience to make her
point clearer.  Ugh.

Those huge spaces favored by Chitty (a popular designer in London,
whose grand "Luther" at the National and questionable "Bartered Bride"
at Covent Garden I saw just this week) are obviously inappropriate for
both the setting and for better projection of voices.  There is something
very strange about the lighting too.  In Act 2, when the text refers to
moonlight, there is brilliant sun breaking through the windows on stage
left, but when the upstage door opens, characters stumble through thick fog
- and you thought San Francisco had micro-climates!  Francesca Zambello's
stage direction moved people around fine, but IF she has any responsibility
for Harries' portrayal, we could use somebody with understanding and
respect for great works.

Jiri Kout is a fine conductor and the SFO Orchestra can be an outstanding
band.  The problem is that the two don't mesh.  I heard Kout's Janacek with
other orchestras and I know the wonderfully hushed sounds this orchestra
can produce - and yet there was none of that today.  Those delicate opening
measures, portraying rushing water, came in fortissimo.  Time and again,
Kout sounded as if he still had his last assignment here in mind:
"Elektra." Ugh again.

It took an awful lot to divert attention from Racette's Jenufa, but a lot
of awful things happened, unfortunately.  "Jenufa" doesn't work well as a
one-woman opera.

Janos Gereben/SF
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