Leoš Janáček premiered his third opera, Jenůfa, Její pastorkyňa (Jenůfa, Her stepdaughter), at the Brno Theater in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic on 21 January 1904. This was Janáček’s first opera that got him any success and the first opera where we really hear his operatic voice starting to come out. The libretto for Jenůfa, also written by Janáček, was based on the play Její pastorkyňa by Gabriela Preissová, the same playwright from whom he got the story for his previous opera, Počátek Románu or The Beginning of a Romance in 1894. He is thought to have written Jenůfa between 1896 and 1902. Janáček came to opera later in life, he was thirty-three at the premier of his first opera, he was fifty by the time Jenůfa opened and his greatest operas were written after the age of sixty-five. Jenůfa holds an interesting place in Janáček’s memory as he recounts twenty years later in his autobiography: “I would bind Jenůfa with the black ribbon of the long illness, the pain, and the sighing of my daughter Olga and my little boy Vladímír.” His little boy in which he speaks of died at an early age a few years before he started writing on Jenůfa, and his daughter, Olga, became ill in 1902 and died just before the completion of Jenůfa, a few months before her twenty-first birthday. Fortunately he did get to play most of the opera to her on her deathbed. The opera is dedicated to her memory.
He presented the opera first to the Prague National Theatre in March 1903, but was rejected. Many believe this is due to bad blood towards him by Karel Kovařovic, the opera head. But even without Prague, the opera premiered in Moravia in Brno the next year and conducted by Janáček’s pupil, Cyril Metoděj Hrazdira. It went of without a hitch and achieved some popular success but still was not performed anywhere for twelve years after that. Finally in 1915, Kovařovic, while under much pressure from Janáček’s friends, consented to put on the work in Prague, but only after his own personal revisions (some major cuts and he reorchestrated a good portion of the score), Janáček agreed to the terms, as he was now sixty-one and had waited long enough. The work was given finally in Prague on 26 May 1916. Soon after the work was translated into German and performed in Berlin in 1918 under the baton of Erich Kleiber. This is what solidified Jenůfa’s reputation in Germany and the rest of the world and led to fifty more performances of Jenůfa before Janáček’s death in 1928.
Unfortunately, it was Kovařovic’s revision of the text that remained the status quo in performances around the world until 1982 when Sir Charles Mackerras reconstructed and recorded Janáček’s original Brno version for Decca, which also contains the original Overture, entitled Žárlivost, or Jealousy, which the composer never heard open his opera during his lifetime.
The original title, Jenůfa, Její pastorkyňa, pastorkyňa literally just means ‘not own daughter’. This is referring to Jenůfa being both foster-daughter and stepdaughter to the Kostelnička.
It is important to note that one should not emphasize too much the violent acts in this story in order to relate it to the Verismo trend at the time of this opera’s premier. The goal of this work, it seems, is less about showing the ‘real’ troubles of the working people, and more to show a kind of spiritual growth and development. Watching through the opera how Jenůfa and Laca both grow from selfish, obsessive people in scene one, to the forgiving, and understanding human beings in the final scene... in other words, from youth to adulthood. The violence is not what should be shocking here, but the hard lessons that life has dealt them. The Kostelnička most of all, which is fitting as the full title truly reflects her as the main character.
When looking for a recording of this opera, especially a FIRST recording, there is really only one to turn to. The first recording of the work as originally intended by its composer. This is the recording mentioned above from Decca in 1982 by Sir Charles Mackerras. The cast is as follows:
Jenůfa - Elisabeth Söderström
Kostelnička - Eva Radnová
Laca - Wieslaw Ochman
Števa - Petr Dvorskü
Karolka - Lucia Popp
Stařenka - Marie Mrazov
Stárek - Václav Zitek
Wiener Staatsoper Chor & Orchester
Elisabeth Söderström is a very believable and empathetic Jenůfa. You feel her pain with her all the way. Her prayer is pure and contrite and her forgiveness of the Kostelnička is full of tenderness and epiphany.
The two tenors are perfectly cast in their contrasting roles and Laca really does win the audience over in the end despite his audacious actions of the first act.
Eva Radnová is most obviously a singing actress of high regard. She sings this complex role with a terrifying intensity yet retains her very human core throughout the set. Her monologue has impeccable commitment and her outburst that ends act II would send shivers down the spine of any music and/or drama lover.
The reason to get this disc though is for the recently passed genius, Sir Charles Mackerras (November 1925 - June 2010). As a young man, after winning a British Council Scholarship, he was able to study conducting with Václav Talich at the Prague Academy of Music. While there he became quick friends with Jiří Tancibudek, principal Oboe of the Czech Philharmonic, who introduced him to the works of Janáček. This started a life long love affair and Mackerras became one of the world's leading authorities on Czech music, most specifically, the music of Leoš Janáček. He single handedly brought him back onto the map. Any singer today who has sung Czech rep can testify to how much Sir Charles Mackerras helped them get through it. On this reading we see Mackerras at his best. He has a deeper understand of the literature than most of today's conductors. The 20th Century dissonances are brought out in a way that pulls at the listener and, like Puccini, almost manipulates them to feel what the characters are feeling, and the lush, beautiful moments of pure tonality resolve the Angst in a way that could make the most hard hearted among us feel hope for a brighter future. The last 10 minutes on this disc shine and affect the listener as much as any moment of Verdi or Puccini.
Because of this recording, and primarily Sir Charles Mackerras, I have found a new love for this entirely underrated Czech composer.
If you want something different to listen to, if you need a short hiatus from La Traviata, La Bohème, and Le Nozze di Figaro (God forbid), then this is a disc I recommend.
-Christopher Michael Kelley
