The Czech composer Leos Janacek found the original poems published anonymously in a newspaper in 1916 and set them to music. They turned out to be by the Moravian Ozef Kalda and concerned a love affair between a gypsy and a man who disappeared for a day with her. The stage director, Deborah Warner, and the tenor, Ian Bostridge, became interested and asked Seamus Heaney for a version in English, a request to which he responded with words of forthrightness and clarity. The new staged work, produced by the English National Opera, received its first performance on Friday and, dramatically speaking, provided a mildly underwhelming three-quarters of an hour.
Centre stage there is a grand piano under which there lies a young man (Bostridge). There appears from the orchestra pit a young black woman (Ruby Philogene). There is a projection on a screen upstage of the image of the man floating, arms outstretched, upside down. On stage the man emerges and is blindfold, restless and haunted-looking. The woman circles the stage as if stalking him. She circles closer until they make contact: "Johnny you are welcome. What are you afraid of?"
He is on his knees, she standing over him and they embrace. Both are blindfold. She takes him by the hands and they "disappear" beneath the piano where there the simulation of committed coupling. She leaves. A red cardigan falls from flies to floor. He is singing, wondering what has happened to him and she returns. They kiss. He sings farewell to his townland and his family, and they are both beside the piano (played sensuously throughout by Julius Drake). The drama, such as it is, seems inexorably predictable: the gypsy has taken her prey. The two voices are effortlessly rich and musical, and the world premiere performance has taken place. The theatre audience's response is muted but sustained. Deborah Warner's staging remains enigmatically understated.