Josef Foerster - Eva (Opera in Three Acts)

Josef Bohuslav FOERSTER (1859-1951)

Eva 

Opera in Three Acts (1899)

Iveta Jirikova (soprano) - Eva

Kostyantyn Andreyev (tenor) - Manek  

Denisa Hamarova (mezzo) - Mesjanovka (his mother)

Igor Tarasov (baritone) - Samko

Elizabeth Batton (mezzo) - Zuzka

Roland Davitt (baritone) - Rubac: 

Wexford Festival Opera Chorus

Lubomir Matl

Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra

Jaroslav Kyzlink

rec. live, Theatre Royal, Wexford, Ireland, 24, 27, 30 October 2004

Review:

Eva is based on a play by Gabriela Preissova; her next was the subject of Janacek’s Jenufa. In common are the Moravian village background, a drama of frustrated love and, controlling too much in the young people’s lives, a powerful matriarch. There the similarities end. It is not simply that Foerster is a lesser composer than Janacek; his intentions were very different, not so concerned with translating folk material into art and more with bringing wider European conventions, principally German, to bear upon a local subject. The shadow of the Wagner of Lohengrin occasionally falls across the score. Only seldom, with the hero Manek, is there an infiltration of folk ideas into the melodic line, though in some of the village scenes there are suggestions of Smetana, in particular of the romantic manner of The Kiss and The Secret. Foerster was a scrupulous and skilful composer, but he was not really, in 1890, the man to give Czech opera a firm new direction; he is, rather, the honourable upholder of tradition, with an intelligent concern to find a wider currency for his country’s opera.

Among Foerster’s best qualities is a feeling for the orchestra, and the performance does well by this in Frantisek Vajnar’s hands and those of the record producers, who allow the drama plenty of space. Leo Marian Vodicka does not find it easy to make much of so indecisive a hero, pleasantly as he sings; his unhappy rival Samko is affectingly taken by Jaroslav Soucek. Mesjanovka, the old battle-axe figure, is tackled with a splendid vehemence by Anna Barova. Eva Depoltova brings a fine intensity to the title-role, though here, too, there are problems with characterizing a heroine about whom Foerster seems to have been a little uncertain. Yet although this may all seem faint praise, the work should not be damned by it: so long as the curious lover of Czech opera does not come to it with expectations held too high, much can be found to enjoy here. To Foerster’s annoyance, his opera came third in a competition which was won by Fibich with Sarka, Kovarovic’s Psohlavci (“The Dogheads”) being runner-up. However, the judges’ verdict seems about right, and third is not too bad, after all.

 John Warrack (Gramophon)