Katya Kabanova, Grange Park Opera: a spare, tense reading of a deeply affecting score

Since it moved to the grounds of the mansion at West Horsley in Sussex which the late Bamber Gascoigne inherited in 2014, Grange Park Opera has cultivated a distinctive repertoire. Of two big current trends in operatic revivals, it has neglected one – the pre-Classical world of Handel and Monteverdi – while giving admirable exposure to the Russian and Eastern European repertoire, notably the early 20th-century operas of Janáček which have been such a rich and relatively recent addition to our operatic experience.

Now it has added a searingly poignant new staging of the 1921 opera Katya Kabanova, one of the most concentrated and eloquent of Janáček’s works; the bare set proves that these pieces need no complex and elaborate stage set-up, just a deep understanding of the emotions that underpin them. In the hands of one of the most experienced of Janáček directors, David Alden, every twist and turn of this tragic tale is highlighted, against a background of the repressive religious culture of the time.

It takes only a tilted white platform that stretches across the stage with a couple of chairs (designer Hannah Postletwaite), strongly cross-lit (lighting Tim Mitchell), to lay out the tensions of the bleak Kabanov family where Katya (the heart-rending soprano Natalya Romaniw) is trapped in a loveless marriage to Tichon (a brutish Adrian Thompson) and dominated by his mother, the Kabanicha (a fiercely unforgiving Susan Bullock). Passion for Boris (the eloquent Thomas Atkins) overcomes Katya, but so does an overwhelming guilt that leads to her death.

Beautifully captured here is the contrast between the awkwardness of the Boris/Katya relationship, as they edge their way together from the distant opposite sides of the platform along what seem like dangerous sides of a cliff, and the much more instinctive partnership of the young Varvara (a natural, pert Katie Bray) and her lover Vanya (the easy-going Benjamin Hulett, a teacher in love with his books). There are analogies here with the contrast in Mozart’s Magic Flute between the earnest Tamino and Pamina with the instinctual Papageno and Papagena.

Katya’s love, expressed in a rhapsody of fluctuating lyrical writing which Romaniw captures to perfection, echoes the violent palpitations of her heart. A storm closes in as umbrellas struggle across the stage, while behind the platform the river seethes silently. Vanya wants to analyse the storm, but the pompous Boris (Clive Bayley), representing the forces of the community, sees it as an ominous message from God. Here, Alden draws on the dark behaviours of obsessive village life that so animated his production of Britten’s Peter Grimes for English National Opera, which drive the isolated Katya towards taking her life in the river.

The sophistication of this reading of the piece is heightened by Stephen Barlow’s command of his Gascoigne Orchestra, which might be a little tauter at times, but draws sharply etched, shadowy colours from wind and strings, with the repeated thwacked timpani notes symbolising the inevitability of Katya’s fate – a spare, tense reading of a deeply affecting score.

In rep until July 12; grangeparkopera.co.uk