© ROH/Clive Barda
Amanda Majeski as Kát'a Kabanová at the Royal Opera House February 2019
Janáček's Kát'a Kabanová has been a very special piece for me over the years, with productions in Wexford in 1972, in Glyndebourne in 1988, and in Toronto in 1994. I would dearly loved to have brought it to Chicago Opera Theater while I was there since it would have been perfect in the Harris Theater. But that would always have been a difficult one with Chicago Lyric having the leasehold on Janáček! But had we done so, then it is very possible that the Royal Opera's Kat'a Amanda Majeski would have sung the title role. When she returned to Chicago in 2009 from her spell at Curtis she was our Vitellia in Tito, and then went on for a hugely successful spell in the Lyric's Ryan Center. I had heard her first as a twenty year old while she was an undergraduate at Northwestern, so for me she was a marked woman!
Well at last the dream was realised at Covent Garden on Thursday evening with Amanda remarkable in the title role, with a superb cast in a new production by Richard Jones at his finest, and superbly conducted by the unstoppable Edward Gardner. The concise concentrated score without a superfluous note has a crushing emotional impact. The last scene with Kát'a and the remarkable Boris of Pavel Černok is devastating.........and they are accompanied by a scary Kabanicha from Susan Bickley, an enchanting Varvara from Emily Edmonds, and excellent contributions from the Tichon Andrew Staples, Andrew Tortise (Kudráš) Clive Bayley (Dikoy) and a notable new voice Dominic Sedgwick making the most of his brief appearance as Kuligin.
Beg for a ticket somehow for this remarkable evening - not to be missed. The Royal Opera at its very best.
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