{"id":3670,"date":"2017-07-18T09:06:19","date_gmt":"2017-07-18T08:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=3670"},"modified":"2017-07-18T09:10:11","modified_gmt":"2017-07-18T08:10:11","slug":"opera-holland-park-kata-kabanova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=3670","title":{"rendered":"Opera Holland Park: Kat\u2019a Kabanova"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opera Holland Park, July 2017<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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This concise, passionate piece comes with echoes of both Chekhov and Ibsen \u2013 somewhere between The Seagull<\/em> and A Doll\u2019s House<\/em>. Based on a mid-nineteenth century Russian play and inspired by Janacek\u2019s late flowering love for a much younger woman, it is written with mature, if not always subtle, musical skill \u2013 that fortissimo timpani roll at the moment of sexual ecstasy for instance – \u00a0and, in this production, conductor Sian Edwards ensures that every nuance is brought out.<\/p>\n

As always at Opera Holland Park the playing area is so wide that it\u2019s almost transverse theatre except that the audience is all on one side. Designer Yannis Thavoris has used it pragmatically, with a pseudo river, complete with the ubiquitous reeds, winding across the space and a semi circular mini stage to represent indoors in various forms \u2013 I won\u2019t dwell on the fact that in its first incarnation the latter reminded me of a trampoline guard. It was effective thereafter.<\/p>\n

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Kat\u2019a (Julia Sporsen) is a married woman with an unexciting husband (Nicky Spence) and an appalling mother-in-law (Anne Mason). In her husband\u2019s absence she falls in love with Boris (Peter Hoare) and of course \u2013 this is opera \u2013 it can\u2019t end happily.<\/p>\n

Sporsen and Hoare work pleasingly together and each brings out the raw longing, regret, guilt and all the rest of it with some impressive solo singing and duet work. The symbolic flying movement as they lift all four of their arms to create a sense of togetherness (with a nod at the old slang implications of \u201cflying\u201d) underpins the singing rather cleverly too. Amongst the supporting roles Paul Curievici as Kudrjas stands out as does Clare Presland\u2019s Varvara.<\/p>\n

The chorus is a strange beast in this production though. The score gives them very little singing but, since they have to be in the building, director Oliver Fuchs uses them a lot in other ways to provide a sense of bustling crowd scenes, people walking by the river or observing the action. The trouble is that there are 32 of them and the lay out of OHP\u2019s stage means that it takes a long time to get that number of people on and into position for what are often very short scenes \u2013 the whole laborious concept is far too fussy. Full marks, thought, for their beautiful, elegant Downton Abbey-esque costumes \u2013 in brown, terracotta, amber, burgundy and orange; like warm old bricks.<\/p>\n

Kat\u2019a Kabanova<\/em> doesn\u2019t \u00a0seem to get as many outings these days as Cunning Little Vixen<\/em> or Jenufa<\/em> and that\u2019s a pity because it\u2019s an interesting piece worth exploring. Well done Opera Holland Park for the usual imaginative programming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opera Holland Park, July 2017 This concise, passionate piece comes with echoes of both Chekhov and Ibsen \u2013 somewhere between The Seagull and A Doll\u2019s House. Based on a mid-nineteenth century Russian play and inspired by Janacek\u2019s late flowering love … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3675,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670\/revisions\/3675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}