JANACEK OPERA IN REVIVAL : BENACKOVA, RYSANEK ILLUMINATE S.F. ‘JENUFA’

No one thought “Jenufa” had much of a chance when the San Francisco Opera first staged Janacek’s complex masterpiece in 1969.

The vocal lines, predicated on the special cadences of the Czech language, resisted comfortable translation.

For all its graceful lyrical flights and violent dramatic outbursts, the quasi-romantic score struck many listeners as short-winded and oddly esoteric.

The libretto--a veristic tale of love, jealousy, infanticide and redemption in a folksy Moravian village--challenged audiences to accept blood and gore within a milieu that suggested the carefree cliches of “The Bartered Bride.”

Most observers decided that the opera, though potentially interesting, was like a wine that travels badly. That, it turned out, was a premature decision.

The basic problem did not lie with Janacek. He knew, emphatically, what he was doing back in 1904.

There was nothing wrong with “Jenufa” that better casting would not cure.

That became blissfully obvious in 1980, when the opera returned with two great singing-actresses in the central roles. Elisabeth Soederstroem, though neither as young nor as resplendent in voice as one might deem ideal, gave an overwhelmingly poignant performance in the title role. Sena Jurinac, nearing the end of a magnificent career, brought extraordinary intensity and compassion to the crucial agonies of Jenufa’s forbidding stepmother.

With Soederstroem and Jurinac, the opera made perfect sense. That would be an impossible act to follow.

San Francisco followed it, triumphantly, on Sunday afternoon.

In the title role, Terence McEwen introduced a bona-fide Czech soprano named Gabriela Benackova (pronounce it Bain- yach -kova). Long celebrated in Europe, she has been curiously neglected by U.S.companies. If there is any justice in the irrational world of opera, America will lie panting at her feet within minutes.

In the role of the matriarchal Kostelnicka, Leonie Rysanek has found a challenge that stimulates her best musical and theatrical instincts. Although she has never been the most disciplined or most consistent of artists, her Senta, Kaiserin in “Frau ohne Schatten” and Lady Macbeth have been unequaled in our time. On the eve of her 60th birthday, she still commands reserves of theatrical intelligence and vocal amplitude that would be the envy of a soprano half her age.

Each of those women defined the conflicts inherent in her role with profound understanding and poetic simplicity. Even more important, the two played their scenes together with mutual sympathy. There could be no thought here of upstaging, no distortion, no resorting to cliches, no showy contest of wills.

Benackova as the betrayed heroine exuded warmth and sweetness, but one always sensed strength beneath her vulnerable facade. Rysanek as the desperate figure of authority and mistaken rectitude struck cold and assertive poses, but one knew they were just that: poses.

The chemistry was right. So was the singing.

Benackova bathed the lines in luminous, silvery tone. She commands a scale of striking evenness, a dynamic range of remarkable sensitivity. She soared radiantly to the high climaxes, but proved equally effective in the sustained whispers of the introspective passages.

Rysanek sang--really sang--a role often relegated to Sprechgesang rhetoric, and sang it with generosity and point. She floated sensuous, insinuating pianissimo tones in the pleading exchange with Stewa. And in the potentially hysterical outbursts after Kostelnicka murders Jenufa’s child, she capitalized on steely thrust that bore no trace of the swooping and yelping that have disfigured some of her more abandoned performances in the past.

Although Benackova and Rysanek are the undoubted central forces in this “Jenufa,” they do not carry the production alone. Wieslaw Ochman delineates the jealousy and, more important, the devotion of Laca with a compelling fusion of power and finesse. Neil Rosenshein complements him as a mellifluous, properly feverish yet callow Stewa.

Charles Mackerras, a Janacek specialist with few peers, pays telling attention to orchestral detail and expressive nuance yet never obscures the grandeur of the score. Moreover, he inspires splendid playing from the patently uneven ensemble in the San Francisco pit and, unlike his predecessors, takes advantage of the lean textures of the original orchestration.

Leni Bauer-Ecsy’s sets and costumes of 1969 remain effective in their picturesquely murky way. The stage direction, now entrusted to Wolfgang Weber, deals efficiently with the principals even though it resorts to clumsy banality in scenes involving the masses.

The opera, sung in the original Czech, benefited from the supertitles of Yveta Synek Graff.