A shaky first try at Janacek

As the operas of Janacek enter into the repertory, no self-respecting opera house dares ignore them. Saturday night at the Civic Theatre, San Diego Opera entered into the ranks of the self-respecting.

Staging its first Janacek opera, “Katya Kabanova,” the 39-year-old company, which often demonstrates an aversion to adventure, gave itself the opportunity to take a step or two toward doing what the Czech composer himself notably did -- throw off the frilly conventions of the past and use music as fractured and obsessive as are our emotions and thought processes to see into the naked soul.

But with each step forward in this conventional, determined-to-entertain production by the company’s general director, Ian Campbell, there has also been one back.

In his 1921 opera, Janacek jerked the story of a young wife struggling with sexual and personal liberation into terms and tones so modern for his time that not until the advent of feminism and musical Minimalism 50 years later did the opera begin to be appreciated. And it is hard to find a modern production that can resist the sheer contemporaneity of a work that had its source in a 19th century Russian play, Alexander Ostrovsky’s “The Storm.” Rare, too, to find a soprano who doesn’t relish the chance to explore the theme of liberation.

Consequently, Campbell’s “Katya” is almost novel in its reactionary way. He insisted the drama remain firmly in the 19th century. Jane LaMotte’s schematic sets -- a painted backdrop of onion dome church, a bit of broken fence, an overstuffed chair or two -- conventionally clue us in to 19th century Russia. A large Impressionistic image of a bird launching into flight on the scrim is the hokey symbol of Katya’s identification of sexuality with an angel’s flight.

On the musical level, too, this is a Katya determined to restrain Janacek’s Modernism.

The conductor, John Fiore, blandly smooths out Janacek’s rough edges, emphasizing what Romanticism lingers in the music. The orchestra is a willing collaborator, sounding uncertain with jerking rhythms but warmly rising to the lyrical passages.

And then there is the mystifying Katya of Patricia Racette. The young American soprano sings radiantly. Fully in command of the music, she is a pleasure to hear. An involved, sympathetic actress, she is also a pleasure to watch. But she pleases too willingly.

Last season at San Francisco Opera, Karita Mattila was a triumphant Katya; her suicide was the result of a woman who learns in her discovery of her inner life that the only way she can defeat an oppressive society is to leave it. Racette’s Katya, on the other hand, should give misogynists comfort. A perky innocent, she simply goes mad. As magnificently as Racette sings Katya’s final scene in her nightie by the Volga, she might as well be another raving Lucia. When Katya jumps into the river as gung ho as onto a trampoline, it is surprising not to see her bounce back up.

There are many fine vocal performances, but few characters in what can be shockingly intense drama here rise above caricature. Josephine Barstow’s Kabanicha, Katya’s stern, unbending mother-in-law, is silent-film villain and silly dominatrix (so unshaken was the audience that it merrily booed her at the curtain call). As Katya’s lover, Raymond Very is a fervent Boris; as Katya’s momma’s-boy husband, Jay Hunter Morris is a stronger-than-usual Tichon. Priti Gandhi’s bouncy Varvara and Kelly Gebhardt’s vibrant Glasha are lively.

James Scott Sikon plays the merchant Dikoi for grotesque laughs. At one point, Campbell has Kabanicha comically spank him, which draws loud titters from the audience, partially drowning out the important musical interlude that follows. When that kind of thing happens, Janacek’s unsettling indictment of society becomes more naughty than nasty.