Fun lover gets into trouble in Jenufa

David Alden’s staging won two Olivier awards on its first appearance in 2006, and it returns, even more strongly cast, better conducted and tighter than ever.

Relocating the action from 19th-century Moravian Slovakia to some unidentified Central European setting, roughly mid-20th century, Alden skilfully updates the issues of Preissova’s drama — small-minded morality, jealousy, domestic violence — without any betrayal of the cultural resonance of the original. The folksy dancers are thus still believably Moravian peasants.

The two central characters are Jenufa and her stepmother, the Kostelnicka (the word means "sacristan"). The latter, fearful (with good reason, as we see from the lynch mob at the end) of the villagers’ reaction to an illegitimate child, disposes of Jenufa’s baby but finally confesses her crime.

Amanda Roocroft, repeating her previous success as Jenufa, steadily shrivels from a sunny, lighthearted girl to an emotional wreck. As she shudders with grief, on being told of the death of her baby, the tenderness of the score captured by the sympathetic conductor Eivind Gullberg Jensen is heartbreaking.

Michaela Martens, the new Kostelnicka, is vocally as formidable as the beehive she sports in the first act — though there’s some affection between her and Jenufa. If her tone spreads occasionally in the big dramatic monologue of the second act, when she steels herself to the deed, the fierceness is at least within character. There’s some harshness to her tone, and to Roocroft’s too, towards the end but that may disappear as the run continues.

The emotional vacuity of the child’s father, Steva, is brilliantly suggested by his Escamillo-type appearance in leathers on a motorbike. Tom Randle plays the role with dissolute abandon. His rival and half-brother, Laca, is sung ardently by Robert Brubaker.

Grandmother Buryja (the excellent Susan Gorton) declines from grey-uniformed door-keeper to senile eccentric, making her blessing all the more moving. The Mayor’s Wife (Susanna Tudor-Thomas), decked out with the taste of Dame Edna, is appropriately creepy.

For directorial intelligence, as well as acting and singing of the highest quality, this is an unmissable show.
Until 21 March (0871 911 0200, www.eno.org ).

English National Opera: Jenufa
London Coliseum
St Martin's Lane, WC2N 4ES