Jenůfa was the first of a set of powerful operas that drove Janáček's reputation internationally, and the first of his great operas centered around tragic heroines. It's still his best known. He wrote his own libretto, and completed the opera over six years (1896 and 1902). It premiered in Brno in 1904. 'The first of Janáček's operas in which his distinctive voice can clearly be heard', and shocking in its social realism, it was seen as eccentric, and had to be revised before it was accepted in Prague (1916) and then more widely in Europe. But the original version rules today (as does the reputation for eccentricity!) and most productions, like the one we will view, update the setting with symbolism of threat and fear. In ours, (see below) the sparse decor is broken with an ice shard threating the small humans below. For the story of the making of the opera, go to Wiki here.
"Few families are as dysfunctional as that at the heart of Janáček’s Jenůfa. But while the Czech composer’s breakthrough work can boast alcoholism, knife crime and infanticide among its chamber of horrors, it also preaches a message of toleration, acceptance and, crucially offers a lesson in forgiveness that raises it above its verismo counterparts to the level of Greek drama." Clive Paget in Limelight.
The opera is now widely recognised as 'one of the greatest operas of the twentieth century' but as this critic continues, it's 'far too infrequently performed'. While the music may still seem strange, the plot is highly modern. In 2006, the Guardian suggested that this is the opera for a firsttime operagoer. 'Audiences used to theatre and film (and wary of wilting sopranos dying interminably over three acts) will embrace the concision and tautness of Leoš Janáček’s drama, not to mention the complicated, fully drawn women characters at the heart of the piece... Indeed, it is hard to imagine any half hour in opera as terrifying and as touching as act two of Jenufa.'
A tangled story
The story came from a play and - like Peter Grimes - it is a tough account of fear and shame, terror and infanticide driven by the power of public opinion in a small community. It's also a story of women - of women's social place and women's powerlessness, and of three extraordinary women related indirectly. Grandmother Buryja had two sons, who died. The younger son is survived by Kostelnička (the sacristan or sextoness of the village church), who was that son's second wife and is Jenůfa's stepmother. Janáček first titled his opera Her Stepdaughter.
And the men? The elder son had married a widow who already had a son, Laca. They had only one child, Števa, who, though the younger, is the preferred one and the legitimate heir to ownership of the mill. At the start of the opera, Števa's cousin, Jenůfa, is in love with him and pregnant by him; his rather feckless half-brother, Laca, in turn loves her. And her stepmother is driven by terror and shame to unthinkable tragedy, murdering the child.
And that music
To this tight, tough story, the composer has set unremittingly dramatic music - perhaps this is why audiences find his operas difficult?
As this critic comments, 'Critics often write that Janáček is ‘not influenced by Wagner’ and that it’s not possible to make comparisons between him and, say, Richard Strauss and Mahler. This is nonsense: his music is as rich in character – based motifs as that of Wagner, as painfully romantic as that of Mahler, and as sweepingly melodic as Strauss. In fact, I consider him the equal of all three composers, and think of him as "Strauss without the stupid bits."’
Pretty much every review of this opera wonders at some of the moments of music-driven drama. 'At the end of Jenůfa, as our tainted heroine and her faithful husband-to-be Laca ride (metaphorically) into the sunset, Janáček unleashes music of extraordinary radiance.' (Bachtrack on the ENO 2021 ROH production.) ' Listen here to the music carrying the voices of Renee Fleming and Mark Baker to the ending. (Poor amateur recording but yes, extraordinary radiance.)
All this dramatic quality and musical beauty should by rights have turned Jenůfa into a box office hit to rival Verdi or Wagner, but it has never done so... Perhaps that’s because the drama is so intense as to be painful. ... Or perhaps it’s because the sheer number of Janáček’s musical ideas is difficult to grasp. To paraphrase (director) Guth’s explanation in the programme, where Verdi might have developed an attractive theme into a whole aria or Wagner into a whole opera, Janáček simply uses it and moves on to the next one.'
Our production
This production, conducted by Simon Rattle, was staged at Staatsoper unter den Linden in 2021 under COVID. Rattle gives his simple statement of his love for the music of Janáček here.
The production uses the loneliness and spaces of the empty auditorium forcefully, helping the opera to focus on characterization rather than setting. ''The way Janáček wrote the libretto causes this story to speak to humanity, to everyone.. It is the story of a beautiful girl who is pregnant and who wants to be happy together with her lover. The tragedy is taking place because society has a problem with this situation, and this leads to brutal results. I think it is very important not to judge the characters and their actions, but to try to empathize with them and present them from a complex perspective'. Director Damiano Michieletto quoted in this review.
As the reviews all agree, the casting is brilliant (albeit mainly non-Czech). Camilla Nylund is Jenůfa. Hanna Schwarz sings grandmother Burya and Stuart Skelton is Laca. Praise is heaped on the performance of Evelyn Herlitzius as the sacristan.
Here's a quick extract from the Gramophone review, all about character and acting.
"At the head of that tragedy is Evelyn Herlitzius’s astonishing Kostelnička, a portrayal of visceral dramatic force but which also nonetheless conveys the complexity of the character’s motivations, showing glimpses of remaining humanity detectable despite years of suppressed pain and shame. She’s in fine, penetrating voice, too, and this version is worth seeing for that alone. But there’s also a moving, powerfully acted performance of the title-role from Camilla Nylund: she’s heartbreaking in Act 2 but convincingly forgiving at the redemptive close, and her soprano has just the right mixture of limpidity and power. Stuart Skelton is superb as a heartbreakingly hopeless – in the most literal sense – Laca, and he sings with his customary big-hearted passion. Ladislav Elgr, also Števa at the Deutsche Oper, is excellent, the fragile, almost frantic machismo he portrays in Act 1 swiftly giving way to cowardice and, in Act 3, something closer to complete subservience.
Complete opera online?
Here's a gem. There's a full opera version of the Barcelona production back in 2005, which was later produced at the Met. It's on YouTube, with an amazing cast - click here to view.
Nina Stemme is Jenůfa, Eva Marton is the Kostelnička with other wonderfully voiced actors tackling those fraught male roles. Read all about it in this review.
"There are three characters in this opera who are infinitely more important, in every respect, than the rest of the dramatis personae put together - to concern oneself with anyone but Jenufa, the Kostelnicka, and Luca is to trivialize one of the most powerful, most deeply moving, operas ever written. And in [this] production ... all three are acted and sung to perfection." More here.
And here's an interesting insight into the worlds of Janacek singers - Nina Stemme playing the Kostelnicka in 2023 in Chicago. She's on a video here with Lise Davidsen, who then played the younger Jenufa (above). Yes, this opera has a hold on music drama now.
Lyn 5/11/24
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