Jonathan Miller’s staging of Jan’s Kát’a Kabanová at the
Metropolitan Opera was ghastly in 1991; revived in 1999, it seems
even less excusable. Miller has the reverse of the Midas touch,
dependably turning what he touches into dross. I have bemoaned
his Pelléas (see “Dumbing down Debussy” in the May 1995 New Criterion); his Kát’a
is no less appalling. His current highly-praised Met
Nozze di Figaro may be a shade more circumspect, but surely does
not deserve the critical raves it has garnered. Though mostly well
sung and decently played, directorially this Kát’a is as effective
a bomb as any anarchist ever detonated.

The primal disaster is the décor of Robert Israel, obviously worked
out in cahoots with the director. The parallel love scene for the
Kát’a-Boris and
Varvara-Kudrjas’
couples should be set in a ravine
behind the Kabanov house, as the Met program notes duly make clear.
This is a sort of secret garden reached through the gate in a fence
and down a winding path. Overgrown with shrubbery, it creates a
romantic atmosphere and favors discreet sexual consummation. It also
allows us to hear simultaneously the more exalted lovemaking of the
main pair, unseen in the distant bushes, and the earthier dalliance
of the comic pair in full view downstage.

The text makes much of this setting: the strategies involved in
getting the key to the gate, the path down which the tremulous
Kát’a
descends to her upward-yearning lover, the natural surroundings that