Gramophone Opera Award 2024: Janáček’s Katya Kabanova

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Corinne Winters is a standout Katya in this essential production

The naturalism and physical theatre of Barrie Kosky’s Salzburg production feels acutely faithful and sympathetic both to the score and to the ordinary folk on stage – sympathetic most of all to the figure of Katya, present almost throughout as both outsider and victim, foreshadowing both Grimes and Wozzeck but also drawing on an understanding of Puccini’s more downtrodden heroines such as Giorgetta.

This grasp of the work in the round also distinguishes Jakub Hrůša’s conducting, which ‘sings’ Czech with the characters, and rises to a special incandescence at points such as the storm interlude of Act 3. He puts the orchestra’s finesse at the service of the score’s violence and its wrenching shifts into ecstatic lyricism.

Above all, the success of this recording belongs to Corinne Winters as Katya. She is as affecting in her playful exchanges with Varvara as she is in the traditionally more central, pathos-laden aspects of the role. Throwing everything of herself into the part, she is matched in this regard by David Butt Philip, as Boris. But there is more than just ‘intensity’ to what they do, essential as that quality is in any Janáček. Paradoxically, the radically bare staging and detailed direction gives them the space to sing with the unfettered lyricism in the composer’s vision of a new Czech verismo. As Tim Ashley remarks in his original review, ‘You really do need to hear it.’ Peter Quantrill

The Recording

Janáček Katya Kabanova

Jens Larsen, David Butt Philip, Evelyn Herlitzius, Jaroslav Březina, Corinne Winters, Benjamin Hulett, Jarmila Balážová, Michael Mofidian et al; Vienna State Opera Chorus; VPO / Jakub Hrůša

Unitel Edition (10/23)

Director Barrie Kosky

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