Rattle's orchestra fires the drama

The LSO on top form continues its ex-MD's Janáček series

Moving: Agneta Eichenholz sings Jenufa at the Barbican Hall Picture by Mark Allan

When Simon Rattle took up his appointment as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2017, one of his most eye-catching projects was to revisit the five great Janáček operas he has conducted throughout his career. He first tackled The Cunning Little Vixen at Glyndebourne in 1977 when he was only 22. This was followed by Katya Kabanova at English National Opera in 1985, Jenufa at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet in 1996, The Makropoulos Casein Aix-en-Provence in 2000 and From the House of the Dead at Berlin’s State Opera in 2011. I feel privileged to have encountered his performances of each work when he was coming fresh to them, so the prospect of a five-opera LSO Janáček cycle was mouthwatering indeed - especially as the LSO plans to record them live.

If this LSO series started a tad unpromisingly with Peter Sellars’ superfluous ‘semi-staging’ of The Cunning Little Vixen in 2019, any fears that the American director might be involved in its sequels were allayed by the decision to give last year’s Katya and now Jenufa as concert performances. Even so, Janáček remains hard work at the box office. Despite the announced attraction of Asmik Grigorian as Jenufa, this weekend’s two Barbican performances failed to sell out. We must hope The Makropoulos Case goes ahead, hopefully with Grigorian as the 300-year-old diva Emilia Marty. The Lithuanian soprano owes it to the LSO and Rattle, having pulled out of these Jenufas at relatively short notice immediately after a gruelling first stab at Puccini’s Turandot in Vienna.