'Katya Kabanova' Brings Bohemia to Boston

The Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Czech composer Leos Janacek’s opera, “Katya Kabanova,” was an emotionally charged presentation driven by rich vocal performances and well planned staging. The production seamlessly integrated challenging melodies, lush instrumental accompaniment, and thought-provoking set design. Throughout “Katya Kabanova’s” almost 2-hour run time, these aspects of the performance continued to complement each other and never felt unbalanced, a remarkable feat.

First performed in 1921, “Katya Kabanova” revolves around the title character’s Katya’s struggle with her abusive and overbearing mother-in-law, Kabanicha, and ineffectual husband, Tichon. She finds freedom and relief in her illicit love interest, Boris, but those feelings have devastating repercussions.

In playing Katya Kabanova, Cuban-American soprano Elaine Alvarez painted a tragic portrait of a desperately unhappy heroine. Though Alvarez initially seemed hesitant in her singing, her performance grew in confidence over the course of the show. Her role required rapid switches from powerful, emotional outbursts to tender, reflective moments; she made these transitions feel natural and effortless. As is the case with many modern operas, the production infrequently placed complete emphasis on vocal performances alone and tended to integrate the singers’ voices into a greater symphonic sound. When Alvarez was unaccompanied, however, her vocal ability truly shone through. As she sang complex, dissonant passages from memory, her performance became only more electrifying and charged with emotion.

The rest of the cast gave performances that ranged from decent to outstanding. As Kabanicha, Elizabeth Byrne convincingly portrayed an overbearing mother-in-law. She sang her piercing, discordant lines in a manner that was clear and precise yet simultaneously aggressive and dominating. Sandra Piques Eddy, who played the supporting character of Varvara, the Kabanov family’s foster daughter, delivered an especially strong performance. Eddy’s vocals were rich, bright, and characterized by striking depth and complexity of timbre. The male leads, on the other hand, fulfilled their roles solidly, but with few noteworthy moments. One area in which all cast members excelled was in their believability; each managed to express great emotion on stage in both acting and singing.

The orchestra’s performance was sublime, gracefully filling the intermezzos between scenes and accentuating on-stage action with precise timing and conviction. “Katya Kabanova” opened with a strong overture, immediately setting up the tension on-stage as the music shifted between the bright and uplifting melodies of flutes and the alarming interjections of violins. Throughout the opera, the orchestra beautifully reflected the emotional twists and turns that took place on the stage.

Set design and lighting were other strong suits of the performance. Although the set was largely minimalist, cutaway set pieces lent it an added sense of depth by creating rooms into which the audience could see. These rectangular demi-walls served as framing devices that emphasized the privacy of Katya’s emotions and made her confessions of her desires and vulnerabilities feel truly genuine. The lighting of the opera was equally impressive, beautifully complementing the dominant mood of each scene. One particularly striking moment was the scene in which Katya agonized about the solitude of her suffering. As the scene progressed, the light became bleaker and colder, and the sharp, contrasting shadows it cast reflected Katya’s feelings of isolation and despair.

What most prominently characterized “Katya Kabanova,” however, was not any single stand-out performance or staging choice, but rather how well integrated each piece of the production was with all of the others. The opera was strong by all metrics—it was technically proficient, aesthetically polished, and emotionally moving. The choices made in casting, set design, and lighting were well thought out and greatly complemented the vocal performances of the singers. Despite the eponymous title, there was no singular star of this “Katya Kabanova” but rather a set of parts that together created an outstanding production.