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Jenufa: From a brief news item in Moravia to a universal opera

The subject of Její pastorkyna’ is a bloody drama. A jealous young man disfigures his fiancée by slashing her face with a knife; a woman drowns the child of her adopted daughter in the river. The story is based on two true incidents that occurred in the Moravian countryside in the mid-nineteenth century. A young dramatist, Gabriela Preissová, who lived in the region, decided to make a play out of them which caused a scandal in Prague in 1890. Leos Janácek attended one of the performances in Brno and decided to set the drama to music. After a long period of composition the opera was performed on 21 January 1904 in Brno.

Stage-director Bob Swaim (right) and designer Ferdinand Wögerbauer at a technical rehearsal for Jenufa in the Felsenreitschule. Photo: Schaffler & Friese

A subject from the people

At the time the Janácek was sixty years old. He had had no success with the two operas he had composed previously: The Beginning of a Romance (1894) and Sárka (not performed until 1925). Její pastorkyna therefore constitutes a major break and marked the beginning of his later career as a composer of opera. Janácek abandoned the mythological and national themes of his second opera based on a libretto intended for Dvorák. He returned to a folkloristic subject similar to his first opera but his treatment of it was radically different and completely revolutionary.

The music of language

Transforming a play into a libretto for an opera at that time essentially meant rendering the prose in verse and structuring the text to allow the inclusion of arias, duos and ensembles. However, Janácek decided to set the play to music just as it was and only to make a few cuts. Thus the first opera in prose was born and the first form of a literary opera in the history of music with an exceptionally dramatic and musical density. This formal innovation was possible due to an even more profound innovation. JanácŠek had been studying the “music of language” for a long time and he noted down everyday conversations that he heard and adapted them to a traditional musical system. The rhythmical and melodious variety of language became the basis of a new and personal musical language. Furthermore, like Béla Bartók in Transylvania, Janácek spent many years in collecting the oral tradition of the folk songs of his country. This extensive research in musical ethnology allowed him to free himself completely from the model of erudite academic music. However, he did not compose a “folkloristic” opera. The local colour only appears musically in two scenes of Její pastorkyna when extracts of folk dances are cited (the song of the recruits and the wedding song).

Model of the stage set for Jenufa, designed by Ferdinand Wögerbauer

Otherwise the language of Janácek completely absorbed the specific characteristics of Moravian music. The work was composed at a time when Moravia was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Slavophile composer was totally committed to claiming recognition for a Czech and Moravian culture distinct from the Germanic tradition. And nowadays one can consider Její pastorkyna as one of the most characteristic productions reflecting the composer’s commitment to Czech culture. Nevertheless, Janácek chose less to compose the image of a genre and rather the internal drama as experienced by the members of the same family rooted in rural life and incest, four individuals thrust into evil along different paths because they are all subject to immense emotions.

Strong emotions

Kostelnicka, the sacristan, commits the most odious crime in killing the child of her adopted daughter Jenufa, but nevertheless, this woman is not regarded as a one-sided monster. On the contrary Gabriela Preissová identified with this honest person, who was undoubtedly a victim of a very oppressive society where even a feministic tragedy can be recognised. A woman tries to save another woman, treated badly and abandoned by men, doomed to shame for having loved and brought a child into the world. The murder of the child allows her to be saved from scorn and to maintain her freedom and her personal happiness. Leos Janácek did not represent the murderess as an inhuman creature either. The fact that the sacristan killed the child does not prevent one from having respect for her. Similarly the fact that Laca slashes Jenufa’s cheeks does not prevent her from finally marrying him and they both feel a deep love for one another. Janácek pays musical justice to all the characters in the drama as if he felt compassion with the suffering of each one of them by vividly portraying their innermost passions. In fact the music is able to express beyond words the tormented subconscious of these sinful souls in a vibrant lyricism that never falls into the pathetic excesses of verismo opera. JanácŠek thus composed the most touching humanistic drama on the basis of a news item about a dreadful deed. The motto of his last opera From the House of the Dead could already apply to his first great opera, “There is a divine spark in every creature”. The dramatic power and irresistible music of Její pastorkyna brought the composer worldwide recognition that still continues to grow. Following the premiere in Brno in 1904, the opera was performed in Prague in 1916, then in Vienna in 1918 before conquering New York, Berlin and the whole world. There are few twentieth-century works that have enjoyed such universal acclaim. The opera will be performed for the first time at the Salzburg Festival in 2001.