A Powerful Story
Jenůfa is based on a play by the Czech writer Gabriela Preissová. Set a Moravian village, it follows the travails of two half-brothers, Števa and Laca, and the woman with whom they are both in love, Jenůfa. Jenůfa loves Števa in return, and is secretly pregnant with his child. But, after the jealous Laca slashes her face, Števa abandons her, repelled by the disfigurement.
Things only get worse for Jenůfa in the second act. Laca, who now hopes to marry her instead, finds out about the child and is furious. In a desperate attempt to help, Jenůfa’s stepmother kills the baby – but tells them both it died naturally. Her plan appears to work and the pair agree to marry, but the child’s body is discovered, forcing Jenůfa’s stepmother to confess.
The opera ends with a remarkable reconciliatory duet between Laca and Jenůfa. Here Janáček’s music gleams, luminous and hopeful after such sustained darkness.
Complex Characters
Though filled with tragedy, Jenůfa is really an opera about reconciliation and spiritual development. Each of its four main characters grow visibly throughout the course of the story:
Jenůfa (soprano) is mutilated, abandoned and robbed of her child, but is ultimately able to forgive each of those who have wronged her.
Kostelnička Buryjovka, Jenůfa’s stepmother (soprano), is horrified by her own actions. She becomes a shadow of her former self, and her eventual confession is a great relief.
Laca Klemeň (tenor) begins the story a jealous and self-centred man, but ends it a generous and understanding one.
Števa Buryja, Laca’s half-brother (tenor) is reconciled with Laca in the final act – with Jenůfa’s help.
The opera’s other roles include:
Grandmother Buryjovka, the grandmother of Laca (contralto)
Foreman at the family mill (baritone)
Jano, a herdboy (soprano)
Herdswoman (mezzo-soprano)
Mayor (bass)
Folk-Inflected Music
Like many of his late-Romantic contemporaries, Janáček’s music is rich, lyrical and full of orchestral colour. Jenůfa includes many structural elements typical of opera at the time, with its mix of duets, trios and choruses, and even a ‘concertato’ number, in which the chorus and ensemble combine in a lyrical, central climax – a constant feature of Italian opera throughout the 19th century.
But Janáček also experimented by incorporating elements of Moravian folk music. He includes in the opera several pseudo folk songs, such as Act I’s ‘Všeci za ženija’ (All are getting married), set to a stage-band accompaniment. Elsewhere, the harmonies and melodies sound quaintly modal (comprised of scales different to the classic major and minor keys – modal music is often heard in folk songs). We also hear what Janáček called ‘speech melodies’ – tunes that reflect the accentuation and inflection of spoken Czech, giving an authentic Moravian edge to the sung line.
Incorporating folk elements into Western art music was not unique in the late 19th century but, with his authentic Moravian roots and extensive experience collecting folk music, Janáček was able to present this music in Jenůfa not as an exoticism but as part of his distinctive style.
This concert performance, with the orchestra on stage rather than constrained to the pit, allows the audience to home in on those folkish elements – and reveals Janacek’s orchestral writing to be a wonderfully seething world of detail and colour.
A Composer who Never Gave Up
Though written between 1894 and 1903, Jenůfa wasn’t performed outside of Moravia until 1916, when Janáček was in his 60s. This new, revised version, given at Prague’s National Theatre, was a huge success and made Janáček an international celebrity.
It also led to a blossoming in his creative output: many of Janáček’s most performed works, such as the orchestral rhapsody Taras Bulba (1915–18) and the Sinfonietta (1926), were written after 1916. He also went on to perfect his folk-infused style in operas such as The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropulos Affair.
But, for Janáček, Jenůfa was also associated with tragedy. The completion of the first version in 1903 came not long after the death of his two children: ‘I would bind Jenůfa simply with the black ribbon of the long illness, suffering and laments of my daughter Olga and my little boy Vladimir,’ he wrote in his autobiography. Jenůfa is dedicated to Olga’s memory, and he played it to her on her deathbed.
Sir Simon Rattle’s Speciality
Sir Simon Rattle has a special relationship with Janáček’s music. The Cunning Little Vixen ‘changed my life’, he has said. It was the work that first made him want to conduct opera – and one of few pieces that can reduce him to tears. Furthermore, his recordings of the Sinfonietta (with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1983) and The Cunning Little Vixen (with the Royal Opera House in 1990) were major milestones in his early discography.
This performance of Jenůfa is the next instalment of Rattle’s Janáček cycle with the LSO. Previous ‘superb’ (Financial Times) performances of Vixen and an ‘exceptional’ (Guardian) rendition of Katya Kabanova have set it up to be one of the operatic highlights of the season.
Written by Timmy Fisher, sub-editor within the BBC Proms Publications team, co-host of The Classical Music Pod, writer and journalist.
