So overwhelming was the musical excellence of SF Opera's Sunday premiere
of Janacek's "Kat'a Kabanova" that it wasn't until second viewing,
tonight, that some fascinating aspects of the performance sank in.

Karita Mattila, in the title role, commands attention every moment she
is on stage as powerfully and effortlessly as any singer I've ever seen,
her gorgeous voice fills the War Memorial, her diction is so perfect
that you suddenly feel fluent in Czech...  and she does some amazing
tricks I didn't notice until now.

In the first act, when she sings of angels, Mattila slowly turns around
completely, but there is no change in the voice, it sounds seamless
through the entire phrase, whether she faces the audience or the back
of the stage!  How does she do that?  No idea.  How does sing with the
same projection from every position, even when lying on her back?  But
most importantly, how does she maintain the complete illusion of being
Kat'a, not a great big star?  These and other mysteries remain unanswered.

Donald Runnicles and the orchestra had another magic night, those Janacek
melody "fragments" underlying, caressing the parlando vocal lines.  Just
when I was thinking how Puccini would have milked those brief melodies,
making whole arias out of each, I realized that Runnicles is doing just
a little bit of that, stretching out the themes just by microseconds -
but who could blame him?  The balance is not to be believed, all the way
through, no exceptions.

And so we come to the Johannes Schaaf production's admirable self-restraint
to minimize his routine messing with the work...  in the first two acts.
However lazy and meaningless those standard trench coats and bizarre
hairdos may be, he can have that and more as long as he doesn't slap the
audience around, saying: "Watch ME, never mind the work." But then, there
comes Act 3.  Goodness, gracious.

There is that enormous bird/missile hanging over poor Kat'a and
projections of birds on the scrim (left over from "Saint Francois"?),
presumably because Kat'a spoke about wanting to fly, two acts previous.
Dramaturge Wolfgang Willaschek must have called this to Schaaf's attention,
so we have Big Bird.  Ganz genug, but that's not the worst of it, by
far.

The Teutonic water-deconstruction screwing up the finale is something
up with which we should not put.  Instead of Kat'a throwing herself
into water churning somewhere off stage, there is a big, shallow puddle
representing the Volga (was the dramaturge thinking of drought in Mother
Russia and what Brecht would have done with that?) and poor, dear Mattila
is made to roll around on top of an inch of water by way of drowning.
If any killing is to be done, the director would be a prime candidate
for that.

The chorus (bald and in black trench coats, of course) then WALKS through
the Volga to downstage, while a blue-clad HazMat team puts Mattila in a
stainless-steel container (dramaturge's thrift for gurney-cum-casket?)
and guess what almost gets lost meanwhile - ITMS: It's the music, stupid!

True, there is a simple solution.  When I go back to the third performance,
I'll keep my eyes closed at the end.

Janos Gereben/SF
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