The renowned SF Opera Chorus was used minimally in Jenůfabut was staged well. The SF Opera summer production gave several of its 2016 Adler Fellows an exciting chance to shine admirably on opening night, particularly bass Antony Reed, mezzo-soprano Zanda Švēde, and soprano Toni Marie Palmertree. His unique marriage of spoken language and musical idiom created an emotive authenticity to every single note, phrase and operatic scene. In Jenůfa, his use of fast repeated-note motifs to develop suspense or create character-motifs foreshadowed film score composers and contemporary minimalists. This performance showed Janáček as a light for composers of future generations.
Indeed, throughout the entire production, the lighting effects helped every scene, every singer, and every emotive arc in the score to positively glow with life, even amidst the gray world of the characters, imprisoned within the psychologically high mill walls. And when the curtain rose on the opening moment of this moving story, many in the audience gasped at the realism of the radiant yellow-gold light (thanks to the genius of renowned lighting designer Gary Marder) that was emanating from the image of a grain field projected on the stage backdrop. But the musical, insightful conducting of Czech Philharmonic’s Music Director Jiří Bělohlávek created a glowing inner light right from the initial notes of the prelude. If one had to describe this production of Jenůfa in a single word, it would be: glowing – which might seem rather ironic, given that Frank Philipp Schlössman's sets consist of gray stones of various sizes and shapes, amidst the drably rustic, exaggeratedly high wooden walls of a mill.
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