Czech in Chicago

Czech Composer Leos Janacek was 40 when he started his masterpiece, the opera Jenufa. He was close to 50 when he finished the work and past 60 before he found an audience that could appreciate it. In its only U.S. production--during the 1924-25 Metropolitan Opera season, three years before Janacek's death--Jenufa (pronounced Yen-uffa) was roundly panned. In recent years, European opera houses have been looking at Jenufa with fresh admiration, and last week Chicago's Lyric Opera followed suit, gave the work its first U.S. performance in 35 years.

Audiences have generally been disturbed by the sordidness of Jenufa's libretto (it hinges on the drowning of an illegitimate child), by the opera's harshly dissonant score, and its generally unmelodic vocal line. Composer Janacek derived many of his melodies from the inflections of common speech, caught them by prowling around with a notebook, jotting down overheard phrases and sentences in approximate musical notation. The result is that the orchestra becomes part of the drama. In last week's performance (which marked the U.S. debut of opulent-voiced Dutch Soprano Gre Brouwenstijn) Jenufa proved to be as haunting a work as Alban Berg's Wozzek (TIME, March 16). From its ominous opening xylophone solo to the final burst of harp-punctuated melody, the village tragedy unfolded without the benefit of set pieces, ensembles or arias. Heavily percussioned, the orchestra sometimes sank to a rich, nervous whisper flickering through the strings, sometimes burst forth in anguished, brassy cries. Throughout, Janacek's use of exotic folk idiom wrapped the opera in an eerie, Kafka-like haze that did much to add depth and mysterious dimension to the melodramatic plot.

For some 50 members of the audience, who left during the first act, Jenufa was apparently still too bleak to take. But those who stayed let loose with a volley of bravos for the cast and brilliant Yugoslav Conductor Lovro Von Matacic. It looked as if Composer Janacek, in his slow and tortuous way, might at last be winning the audience that had so long eluded him.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.