Leoš Janáček, like his operas, is an enigma, a tangle of contradictions and complicated relationships, light and dark, sometimes very dark. His personal life made success as a composer a battle, and his difficulties with the opera world of the time tangled with his personal life. Read a graphic account of the relationships and the highs and lows of his career here.
For the first time in the nine years of this course, I'm writing to introduce an opera composer whose works none of our members knew well - or even at all! Yet - another puzzle - his operas are now frequently performed and much lauded by experts. The puzzle of Janáček involves many stories.
His own story? Born 1852, in Hukvaldy (in Moravia) and living most of his life in Brno, he was a passionate Czech, and known for half his professional life only in Czechoslovakia. Full bio here.
This is partly a story of his strange music. A teacher, a collector of folk songs, a music theorist (and a fine pianist), he was deeply involved in folklore and Slavic music, and (like Britten) loved bringing folk music into classical works. He also had a fascination with the music of speech, and it showed in all his operas. This made the operas, which were of course in Czech, stranger as he embedded in them what he called ‘speech tunes’ – a conversational-sounding musical adaptation of the rhythms, pitches and inflections of spoken Czech. There's a mini-thesis on his musical scholarship and its results for his work here. Titled: Musical Realism of Leoš Janáček: From Speech Melodies to a Theory of Composition, it starts with a quote from him:
I marvel at the thousands upon thousands of manifestations of rhythms, of worlds of light, of color, of sound and touch, and my tone grows young through the eternal rhythmic renewal of eternally young nature. Contact with nature, I am part of it. Eternal youth.
So where does his work fit in the story of the opera art form? Not easily! Janáček was born midcentury, and created his principal operas after the turn of the century, when opera was moving from lush romantic to verismo styles, and its music had a new modernity (think Berg, Stravinsky.) The western opera houses fostered both the old and the new western styles, but were less than enthusiastic about this very East European, original, and arguably difficult music - not to mention the shocking stories he was turning into opera. Jenufa, his dark, first major opera, was performed in Brno in 1904, refused by Prague because the musicians and chorus petitioned against it, arguing it would ruin their instruments and voices. Rewritten, it was finally accepted by Prague in 1918, then at last, much later, by other houses. In 1920 he finished the opera Katya Kabanova. In 1921, he started work on his next opera The Cunning Little Vixen. It was the breakthrough to success, but he was to live only seven more years. He wrote to his beloved young friend Kamila, "I captured the cunning little vixen for the forest and for the sorrow of one's final years. A merry thing with a sad ending, and I too am standing at that sad end.
The sad, sweet ending of the opera, all about humans and the cycles of Nature, was played at his funeral.
Max Brod (1884–1968) wrote this moving essay/obituary of his friend Leoš Janáček at his death in 1928. It ends with an account of that funeral playing of the last scene from Vixen, sad and quiet....
“And yet it is beautiful, how the forest nourishes this swarm – that is eternal youth! Again and again, life begins anew in the forest, and the nightingales return in the spring – and they find nests, they find love. Goodbyes turn into welcomes; the leaves and blossoms come back, and all the flowers, cowslips, violets, dandelions have never been so happy. People pass by and bow their heads if they understand – and they know what Eternity is.” Full libretto of Vixen is here.
And then there were those shocking and crazy stories he turned into opera plots. Jenufa that first (delayed) success announced his operas as dark and turgid human stories. (Katya Kabanova, in 1920, would be darker.) But then came the surprises - the other three we will watch.
In the four centuries or so since the first operas were written, operatic stories have been inspired by an astonishing array of literary sources -- from Nordic legends and Greek classics, to romance novels and historical fiction.
Still, there's one composer who may win the prize for operas based on wide-ranging sources. In 1920, Leos Janacek turned to science fiction for his opera The Excursions of Mr. Broucek, setting one of its scenes on the moon, where the local residents turn out to be fussy, art aficionados. Another of his operas, The Makropulos Case, is a sort time travel story, in which a magic formula lets the main character live for hundreds of years. But when it comes to unorthodox subject matter, Janacek may have outdone even himself with The Cunning Little Vixen, basing it on what was essentially a comic strip.
So, instead of regal kings and consumptive heroines, this opera stars badgers, dogs, chickens and frogs, with bit parts for a flurry of other curious critters -- and even a handful of humans. Along the way they tell a gently cautionary tale that's charming, frightening, tragic -- and in the end, life-affirming. Read more here.
And thus to the extraordinary popularity of his operas today with many experts. Listen to an irritating but very interesting answer here! In his "If I Could Choose Only One Work By... Music Guide", Dave Hurwitz nominates for Janáček the Cunning Little Vixen.
Vixen Sharp-Ears
The inspiration came from a serialized cartoon, the characters are animals and humans, sometimes doubling as the other. The music is pure Janáček.
The idea of importing human characteristics onto animal forms transcends any barrier to the story; it removes race, religion and class into a simple narrative of a fight for freedom and the never-ending cycle of life. Exploring the relationship between humans and the environment, it is easy to see Janáček’s views on the subject; a huge nature fan he spent much of his time outdoors studying animals even teaching his chickens how to jump on command.
The human characters in the opera come off as far more repressed than the Vixen who leaps away from her restraints; was Janáček alluding to the fact that we should all embrace our inner animal? Anthony Tommasini writing for The New York Times notes, ‘the human characters are troubled souls, especially a drunken priest who has never lived down the false accusation that he seduced a woman in his youth, and a mopey schoolmaster who loves a villager from afar.’
Bound by the constraints of society they do not embrace their love or their chance at happiness. Unlike the impish Vixen who chases what she wants, and ultimately, gets it. Take the risks and live life to the fullest seems to be Janáček’s message; possibly a way of urging his real-life unrequited love to leave her husband and embrace the wilderness of the human heart. More here.
Here's Wiki again for a quick introduction.
It's hardly surprising that this cartoon-based but sweetly serious opera, with a menagerie of colorful characters, should become a favourite of modern designers! Just read the reviews! The Guardian reviewer writes of the Glydebourne production that it is " full of opportunities for theatrical sleight of hand. Animals appear through hidden holes in the stage, then seem to be absorbed back into it. Dancing mayflies court, then mate, and then pack away their shimmering silk costumes and sink into the earth. Seasons change in an instant, with a billowing cloth of snow or a change in the colour of the cloud-like leaves." Janáček would have loved it.
And in a wonderful turnaround, The European Opera Centre decided to animate the opera, to reach an international audience who might otherwise never experience opera. "Created at the first Manchester International Festival by Laurent Pillot with the Hallé orchestra, this version allows audiences to experience the animated film on a big screen accompanied by the orchestral track performed live - hence creating a unique and memorable experience." Watch a brief video on the making of this gem.
Our production?
The Chatelet production that we will be watching is famous as the major promotion of the opera by Charles Mackerras in 1995. It's directed by Nicholas Hytner and has Thomas Allen as The Forester and Eva Jenis The Vixen. "Pure delight" is the response of this reviewer. He also gives a fine account of the opera. "Mackerras’s conducting adds the intensity of live performance to the luminous lyricism of his studio version (Decca, 11/86), matched by Nicholas Hytner’s witty, dynamic staging." That's from Gramophone's review.
Full opera online?
Yes, there is a brilliant production of Cunning Little Vixen here online Yes, it's the famous Chatelet production that we will be watching on Friday, Charles Mackerras conducting in 1995, with Thomas Allen as The Forester and Eva Jenis The Vixen. The costumes are glorious...
The YouTube version has no English subtitles, but it tells its own story.
Lyn, 23/10
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