young Governess confronted with an evil beyond her comprehension. The hymn to a summer evening was poetically sung. As Flora, Nia Lloyd held the stage effectively in her song to the doll, while Owain Kember's Mi les hinted darkl y at perverted childhood. Menai Davies was totally committed and so powerful in presence that Mrs Grose almost became the centre around which the tragedy revolved. She also sang the role in the Adrian Slack production , and her experience showed in the firm authorit y of everything she did.
Michael Rafferty showed a keen appreciation of Britten's textural patterns , supported by much sensitive woodwind and celesta playing. KENNETH LOVELA o
Jenufa. Royal Opera at Covent Garden, November 17 and 28 This was a Big Night at Covent Garden: the first new production of the season, the first new production of Bernard Haitink as Royal Opera music director-designate, the British opera -producing de but of Yuri Lyubimov. By and large it was an occasion for happiness. Not unmixed : with surtitles also making their Royal Opera debut , there was plent y of passing annoyance. But on the whole I felt pleased to be in the house (not a very familiar sensation in recent times), confident that the musical guidance of the company is in safe hands, and - as after any even hal fway decent performance of this sublime work-glad to be alive.
It is nine years since Jenufa was last given in London. The gap has been painfully long; but meanwhile the later , stranger, knottier Janacek operas-even the 'impossible' Osud- have all made huge headway with the Briti sh public. It was, therefore, the perfect moment to return to the earliest of his operas to be acclaimed a masterpiece , and to find that it had paled not the tiniest bit in comparison. The strongest feature of the Lyubimov production is its surging theatricality: the celebrated Russian has responded with passionate intensit y to the dramatic potency of the opera, to its p sychological and social honesty of vision, and to a poetic lyricism of sound less compressed than in those later works yet still in total control of the dramatic articulation.
The pioneering 1956 Royal Opera Jenufa, though it declined into revival routine in later years, had the merit of Jan Brazda's scenery, simple and realistically localized in ways currently out of fashion. Picturesque Moravia figures very little in its successor. A bare stage is bounded by revolving panels, a blank backcloth, and a small grave with cross placed permanently over the prompt-box. There are no sets to speak of; a wooden house fac;:ade, visible much of the time, can suddenly be laid flat (by figurants) in moments of psychological crisis. Apart from the bridal-chorus skirts in Act 3, there are no folk details and folk colours in Clare Mitchell's timeless-tomodern costumes . Expressively choreographed non-naturalism continually penetrates the action, outlining key visual images, illustrating emotional patterns. Each act opens with seasonal petal- or leaf-throwing (the start, which also contains a dumb show of events to come, is played to the overture- Zarlivost or 'Jealousy', as it came to be known-that Janacek discarded from the opera). In Act 1 Jenufa and Steva discuss her pregnancy (supposedly the strictest secret) wh ile swaying sarabande-like among a movement group; at the Kostelnicka's moment of terrible decision, six bare-chested scene-shifters in white leotards come on to do their house-collapsing bit. Jets of smoke whoosh up portentously at the back . The side panels spin. Lighting changes are momentous.
For myself, I prefer the tone of a Jenuja production to be taken from within the 92
