Jenůfa, a tragic opera
between past and present

Atom Egoyan’s staging blends rural folklore with sleek modern minimalism

By Sophie Jama

November 22, 2025

Until November 30, 2025, Montréal becomes the stage for broken dreams and impossible loves as Jenůfa takes over the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. Within the walls of this iconic venue, Leoš Janáček’s masterpiece comes alive under the bold direction of Atom Egoyan: a remote village, a heroine torn between silence and defiance, and a world where honour, guilt, and forgiveness resound in chorus under the watchful eye of Nicole Paiement.

Leoš Janáček’s masterpiece comes alive under the bold direction of Atom Egoyan.

Picture a remote village tucked away somewhere in Moravia, where life laughs at time and clings fiercely to ancestral ways. Here lives Jenůfa, a radiant orphan and humble teacher: between chores, she gifts the villagers with the precious treasure of knowledge, teaching the alphabet as others might teach hope.

Around her orbit a tangle of destinies revolve — the gentle grandmother, the stern but loving Kostelnička — her stepmother, a weaver of honour and rites — and two men whose hearts waver beneath such light: Laca, desperately in love, and Števa, the golden-haired rogue, an untamable charmer known as a drunkard.

But neither love nor passion can silence the whispers or bend the village’s laws. Jenůfa, already secretly a mother, dreams of marrying Števa, hoping to be spared military service. Yet the spiral of disgrace tightens: the formidable Kostelnička, haunted by her own pain, commits the unthinkable to secure her foster daughter’s future. Through this crime, the weight of illusion shatters, but flickers of new light and the grace of forgiveness begin to emerge at the cliff’s edge.

Between folklore and contemporary creation

In Atom Egoyan’s stripped-down staging, past and present waltz arm in arm. Costumes seem plucked from a rural dream while a shifting set — part moon, part heart, part newborn—looms over the characters like a buried secret. The chorus becomes an embodied crowd, a collective conscience, judge of right and wrong, as the dramatic tension swings between moments of tender intimacy and violent tragedy.

‘From the weight of shattered illusions comes the spark of new light, the grace of forgiveness.​’

At the heart of the turmoil: two radiant sopranos for Jenůfa and Kostelnička, two tenors, steadfast or carefree, for Laca and Števa. Surrounding them are the magnificent Chorus of the Opéra de Montréal and the Orchestre Métropolitain, led by the talented Nicole Paiement, who breathes both contemporary edge and the warmth of Czech folk songs into Janáček’s score.

Everything is sung in Czech, but surtitles in French and English open doors to confidences and secrets, to age-old tensions between heart, honour, guilt, and redemption. An opera to see and feel — even in its bursts of light, where forgiveness may be the most radical form of hope.

‘A moving opera pulsing with light, where forgiveness may be the boldest form of hope.’

When the curtain falls on Jenůfa, only a handful of light remains on the chorus, an echo of forgiveness and resilience that runs through the opera like an unexpected truth. In this Moravia, both dreamlike and achingly honest, Janáček’s music becomes a breath, linking the wounds of the past to the fragile promise of a reimagined future. And in the rustle of costumes, at the heart of this shifting set, the audience leaves the hall moved but full of hope: modernity can sometimes embrace heritage without breaking it, and grace can arise where everyone thought all was lost.

Performers

Marie-Adeline Henry (Jenůfa)
Katarina Karnéus (Kostelnička)
Edgaras Montvidas (Laca)
Isaiah Bell (Števa)
Mikelis Rogers (Stárek)
Sydney Frodsham (Stefania Buryja)
Colin Mackey (Rychtar – Maire)
Camila Montefusco (Rychtarka – Mairesse)
Tessa Fackelmann (Karolka)
Justine Ledoux (Pastuchyna)
Bridget Esler (Barena)
Odile Portugais (Jano)
Ellita Gagner (Tetka)

Jenůfa, by Leoš Janáček

Direction: Atom Egoyan
Conductor: Nicole Paiement
Chorus of the Opéra de Montréal Orchestre Métropolitain

Sung in Czech, surtitled in French and English
Until November 30, 2025, at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts, Montréal.

Images: Vivien Gaumand

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Sophie Jama holds a PhD in anthropology and a master’s degree in comparative literature. She has published several works in Québec and France. For the past 15 years, she has covered Montreal’s cultural scene, including theatre, dance, circus, and other performing arts.