Dan Rest

The diva turns 65 today!

Chris’s Cache celebrates Karita Mattila, one of its favorite singers, in a special double-bill featuring the soprano performing Janáček, one of her signature composers. Please find two performances of Káťa Kabanová, one in which she performs the title role, plus a later one featuring Mattila in her later Fach as Kabanicha tormenting Eva-Maria Westbroek as Káťa.

For reasons I don’t entirely remember, I was in a funk during December 2004 and completely missed seeing Mattila perform Káťa Kabanová at the Met: one of those great regrets all of us feel when we later realize we missed something special.

Káťa is a wonderful work that isn’t revived often enough. Many companies get around to Její pastorkyňa (aka Jenůfa) which I suppose fills their Czech quota. I attended the Met’s premiere of that work back in 1991, a Jonathan Miller production that finally brought Gabriela Beňačková to the Met. It was also the opera in which Beňačková first performed in the U.S., a 1979 evening with Opera Orchestra of New York that one can hear here.

Although Káťa contained a great role for Mattila, I understand that later Kabanicha did not prove as good a fit for her as Kostelnička in Jenůfa bas been. Today’s Berlin performance at the Berlin Staatsoper may document her only performances in the role.

A planned Met revival of Káťa in 2020 was thwarted by the pandemic closure. I suspect it was originally scheduled for a soprano who had crashed and burned (cough… Opolais…cough) and her replacement was a puzzling, unexpected choice. We missed Dolora Zajick’s planned Met farewell as Kabanicha, which is a pity. Though the Miller production is now over thirty years old, I, for one, still hope we get another opportunity to experience it …and Káťa.

Happy birthday to the greatest Karita!

Janáček: Káťa Kabanová

Káťa: Karita Mattila
Kabanicha: Judith Forst
Varvara: Liora Grodnikkaite
Boris: Brandon Jovanovich
Tichon: Jason Collins
Dikoj: Andrew Shore

Conductor: Markus Stenz
Lyric Opera of Chicago
22 November 2009
Broadcast

Káťa: Eva-Maria Westbroek
Kabanicha: Karita Mattila
Varvara: Anna Lapkovskaja
Boris: Simon O’Neill
Tichon: Stephan Rügamer
Dikoj: Pavlo Hunka

Conductor: Thomas Guggeis
Staatsoper Berlin
10 October 2019
In-house recording

Both recordings of Káťa can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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Christopher Corwin

Christopher Corwin began writing for parterre box in 2011 under the pen name “DeCaffarrelli.” His work has also appeared in , The New York Times, Musical America, The Observer, San Francisco Classical Voice and BAMNotes. Like many, he came to opera via the Saturday Met Opera broadcasts which he began listening to at age 11. His particular enthusiasm is 17th and 18th century opera. Since 2015 he has curated the weekly podcast Trove Thursday on parterre box presenting live recordings.

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