Conductor Simon Rattle and his colleagues taking a bow after their performance of Káťa Kabanová at the Barbican Hall on January 11, 2023 (photograph © Mark Allan, from the booklet for the LSO Live recording, courtesy of PIAS)
One week from today, LSO Live, the “house label” of the London Symphony Orchestra, will release its second album in its planned cycle of the operas of Leoš Janáček. (The first opera in the series was The Cunning Little Vixen. Those searching for it on this site will be disappointed, since I have long been content with my Frankfurt Opera recording of that opera, which I have had for almost five years!) The second opera in the series is Káťa Kabanová; and, if readers will forgive me, I would like to approach this opera in a somewhat roundabout fashion.
My peregrination will begin with George Balanchine, the founder of the New York City Ballet. In January of 2009, Arlene Croce wrote an engaging piece for The New Yorker about a booklet of Balanchine quotations, “By George Balanchine,” which was published in 1984, the year after he died. One of those citations was so significant that he called it “Balanchine’s Law.” That law was simple and straightforward: “There are no mothers-in-law in ballet.”
It probably goes without saying that this law does not apply to opera in general. More specifically, however, the whole plot of Káťa Kabanová revolves around the tension between the title character and her mother-in-law and the futile struggle of her husband to resolve that tension. Those that may be hesitant to approach this opera due to the nuances of the Czech libretto should be reassured. More often than not, one learns more about the dispositions of the individual characters through the music, particularly where the instrumental accompaniment is concerned. This is as much a matter of intense instrumentation as it is of how the thematic lines of the individual characters are shaped.
That said, I have to confess that, where the Janáček operas are concerned, I have had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time. Due to the leadership of the San Francisco Opera by Pamela Rosenberg, I was able to see productions of Káťa Kabanová in 2002 and The Cunning Little Vixen in 2004. (I had previously seen the latter at the New York State Theater, now the David H. Koch Theater, when I was doing computer research at a laboratory in Ridgefield, Connecticut.) When he succeeded her in 2006, David Gockley picked up that baton with a production of The Makropulos Affair in 2010, followed by Jenůfa in 2016. In other words, I have experienced over a decade of experiencing Janáček’s operas; and I am more than ready for subsequent LSO Live releases. Since there are nine of those operas, I still have much to anticipate!
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