Jenufa
Welsh National Opera
Cardiff Millennium Centre

JENUFA by Leos Janacek is an operatic EastEnders on steroids and pulls no punches in its musical intensity and beautiful singing.

Welsh National Opera conductor Tomas Hanus takes to the stage beforehand to regale us about the horror of war in Europe and explain that the performance is all about love and humanity. Hanus takes to the microphone again after the curtain calls.

I suppose the opera’s storyline about the pregnant Jenufa being abandoned by her lover after her boyfriend’s half-brother slashed her face with a knife while professing his love for her, and then her step-mother murdering her baby could be compared to the conflict in Ukraine.

But as an act of love and humanity I think that was a stretch too far. Also, I have never experienced a theatre production make these protestations about the many British and US illegal wars, nor has the WNO condemned the barbarous Saudi Arabian war in Yemen.

But putting that hypocrisy to one side, Elizabeth Llewellyn is a fine Jenufa, while Eliska Weissova is her convincing stern and God-fearing stepmother, Kostelnicka.

Rhodri Prys Jones is a well-acted and sung louche and drunken Steva, who abandons Jenufa after his half-brother Laca, sung by Peter Berger, leaves his girlfriend’s face disfigured after an unpunished knife attack.

But it is the exhortations about God’s mercy and goodness that ring so false within this production of small-town hypocrisy.

The music is beautiful and Janacek’s choral interplays are sung magnificently by the mighty WNO chorus. The production also perfectly captures small-town claustrophobia.

But we are struck by the banality of evil writ large above the stage with the ugly words the characters sing shown on the subtitle screens.

Despite the music and singing there is nothing likeable in the story, or the characters, to redeem the grimly misogynistic fare on offer.

Tours until May 10. Details from www.wno.org.