Janacek's two most neglected operas - his long-buried first opera, Sarka, and the opera he himself never saw staged, Osud (Fate) - make a fascinating double bill. Though they come from very different periods of the composer's career, there are curious parallels between the two. Each opera lasts just over an hour, and both display Janacek's idiosyncratic approach to dramatic structure, with each losing one of two principal characters before the final act.
Osud, the product of Janacek's first full maturity in 1903 after completing Jenufa, contains some of the composer's richest inspirations. So the success of Olivia Fuchs's Garsington production is hardly a surprise. If Sarka still leaves doubts in the mind, that is largely a question of the odd staging.
Fuchs and designer Niki Turner update both operas, and while shifting Osud from around 1900 to a more modern period is acceptable enough, the updating of Sarka, a folk legend about knights in armour and hordes of rampaging Amazonian women, is seriously damaging. The crux of the latter is that two sworn enemies - Sarka, the man-hating leader of the Amazons, and the knightly hero Ctirad - fall in love on seeing each other, strangely bewitched by each other's eyes. That symbolic representation of the equivocal love-hate relationship between man and woman loses all credibility when instead of knights you have a chorus of men in black lounge suits, all wearing black fedoras like members of a Mafia cell.
In the central roles are the formidable Susan Stacey as Sarka and the Slovakian tenor Ludovit Ludha as Ctirad: both are bulkily unromantic figures. Still, Elgar Howarth and the Garsington Opera Orchestra bring out the richness of this early score.
The opening of Osud, a fast waltz ensemble set in a crowded German spa, is an exhilarating preparation for this odd story of a composer, Zivny, and his tragic love affair with Mila. Zivny is writing an opera about their relationship, but after Mila's death he finds himself powerless to complete it. As he muses over this problem with his students in the final act, the piece unexpectedly intensifies. That is largely to the credit of Adrian Thompson as Zivny. His tenor may lack beauty but it has ample power and projection, movingly bringing out the composer's frustration.
· In rep until July 11. Box office: 01865 361636.
