Jenùfa by Leoš Janácek, London Symphony Orchestra, Barbican Hall, London EC2

5*****: Clare Colvin.

“Powerfully vivid performance of Janácek’s most moving opera.”

I have never seen a production of Janácek’s Jenùfa before where so much enlightening detail about human nature comes to surface in the course of the evening. Philip Larkin’s famous lines about the effect of parents’ inadequacies upon their children could well apply here. Jenùfa’s reply to her grandmother’s praise of her academic progress, that “my mind fell in the water long ago” indicates she is already set up to fail in the remote Moravian community where she has grown up.

​The tragically moving tale, based on fact, of an unwanted pregnancy ending in infanticide, is given an inspired reading by Sir Simon Rattle, now Conductor Emeritus to the LSO, with a superb cast and an energised London Symphony Orchestra. There are times when a concert performance may have a clarity over one that is staged, and this is remarkably so with the line of top soloists in concert hall dress, singing from music stands at the Barbican Hall.

​Swedish soprano Agneta Eichenholz, who came to the title role after the designated soprano Asik Grigorian withdrew, captures the vulnerability of a young woman caught in the unforgivable situation of a birth outside wedlock. The sibling rivalry between the half-brothers leads to the jealous Laca (Czech tenor Aleš Briscein in clarion voice) cutting Jenufa’s cheek. This in turn results in the drunken loudmouth brother Števa (a bravura performance by tenor Nicky Spence) falling immediately out of love at Jenufa’s spoiled beauty. So when Jenufa’s mother, the formidable Kostelnička, calls on Števa to make good his duty as father of the child, he confesses he’s already engaged to marry the Mayor’s daughter Karolka.

​Former winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the Year Award, Swedish mezzo-soprano Katarina Karnéus may have been a restrained Sacristan, but her horror at the depths of what she has done while her daughter lay in a drugged sleep is a hugely powerful moment. In Act 3, it seems that Jenufa will be reconciled to finding a new life with Laca. At a deliberately low profile wedding the brothers make friendly little digs at each other, and a bunch of uninvited guests cheerfully gate crash. Then a shout from outside as a baby is found under the melting ice of a stream brings the whole edifice crashing down over their heads.

​The lyrical ending, after the Kostelnička has confessed and been led off to face justice, leaves Jenufa and Laca facing the future together, in declaring that the world doesn’t matter as long as they have each other. One hopes so, but at least the dastardly Steva faces a ruined reputation. Apart from the main roles, there is commendable support from others in the cast, including Evelin Novak, swiftly turning from warmth to fury at Steva’s betrayal, and Carole Wilson’s fallible matriarch and retired mill owner Grandmother Buryjovka.

Sir Simon Rattle conductor; Simon Halsey chorus master; production pictures Mark Allan

Recorded for future broadcast from 8 February on Marquee TV