Kát'a Kabanová 2007-07-02

Internal Occurrences (2)

• Comment
  • I was over in the UK on my own for a week, my main purpose being to drive Mum (and [[Barney|Barney]]) to Wales for a few days. This performance fitted in nicely and was hard to resist. Katya is one of my favourites and has been very special to me since 1993. Charles Mackerras is the grand old man of Janáček conducting. He led the first UK performance of a Janáček opera (Katya, actually) back in 1951 and here he was performing it for the first time at Covent Garden. I didn't think this would be Mum's cup of tea, especially after three days in Wales, so I asked Jenny to join me. We went down on the train from Huntingdon, had a nice meal at the Covent Garden restaurant, and enjoyed a memorable performance. Trevor Nunn's 1994 production was rather naturalistic and thus very different from the performance Sylvia and I saw in Munich, but the sweep of the Volga in the background was reminiscent of Munch's Scream, which seemed very fitting given the nightmarish quality of Katya's situation. Janice Watson was a tender Katya and Felicity Palmer the epitome of the mother-in-law from hell.
• Date
  • 2007-07-02