New-Old Gem

By Martha Duffy

Despite its reputation as a stable for opera's cavalry, the Metropolitan Opera does, of course, produce works that are new or outside the standard repertory. The results are uneven. This season has already seen an unfortunate production of Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice, an attenuated musical rumination exquisitely ill-suited to a house of the Met's proportions. Last week the company used its resources to far better effect. It revived Czech Composer Leos Janacek's Jenufa, last heard at the Met 50 years ago in a production starring Maria Jeritza. Still looking glamorous at 87, Jeritza watched opening night from the front left box. She was applauded warmly at the first intermission.

Jenufa 's slow recognition in the U.S. bears coincidental resemblance to its composer's career. If ever there was a late bloomer, it was Janacek. A Moravian, he was professor of composition but wrote little of consequence himself before he was 40. He completed Jenufa in 1903 when he was 49. It received its "overnight" success a dozen years later. He wrote several other operas, including From the House of the Dead, which is almost a speculation on Dostoyevsky's novel, and The Makropoulos Affair, a fantastic showpiece for orchestra.

Rimmed World. Though it can be placed well enough among turn-of-the-century verismo works, Jenufa is an elusive opera in some ways. The setting is a Moravian village, and the composer knew its inhabitants with detachment and compassion. He creates no heroes, but a world of people working, flirting, taking naps, worrying about saving face or avoiding the draft. The plot, however, concerns deadly primal emotions: love, jealousy and ambition. Jenufa is pregnant by steva, a wastrel who chases every girl in town. Jenufa still hopes to catch him, but her world is invisibly rimmed by two figures far more powerful than she and her faithless swain. One is a poor man named Laca, who loves her with a ferocity that drives him to ruin her beauty--all that steva ever noticed about her--by slashing her cheek with a knife. The other adoring menace is her foster mother Kostelnica, the church sextoness and a respected authority in the village. When Kostelnica realizes that steva will not settle down and that Laca could not live with the child, she drowns Jenufa's baby. Though Jenufa and Laca decide to marry in the end, there is an almost untouchable sadness about the opera. Janacek in middle age seemed able to summon back the passions of youth and apply the judgment of experience to their consequences.

That his peasant drama succeeds so well lies in the music. Just as there are no heroes, there are no big arias or set-piece scenes. Not that the opera is merely a modified tone poem; it is compellingly dramatic. In style, there may be a bit of Mascagni pageantry here, an arioso there that could have flown right out of Butterfly. But the sound is distinct and modern, punctuated by post-romantic dissonances. Then there are charming interludes peculiar to Janacek. He loved duplicating spoken inflections and rhythms in sung speech. He doted on mini three-and four-note motifs and liked to tuck folk songs and Greek church modes into his music.

All of which leads to one hero who was definitely in evidence: Conductor John Nelson. Only 32, he made his Met debut last year leading Berlioz's extravaganza Les Troyens. In Jenufa, he kept the complex musical structure as clear as Pierre Boulez himself might have and brought a warmth to the orchestral sound that can only come from deep sympathy with the work.

Fury for Fury. The tonal color must have been drawn from Nelson's imagination because he certainly could not have been inspired by any on stage. Designer Gunther Schneider-Siemssen's sets leave the impression that Moravia is black, white and gray, and possibly above the tree line. The singing was for the most part excellent. Astrid Varnay, returning to the Met after 18 years, has lost much of her beautiful voice. But she has learned from Birgit Nilsson (or is it the other way around?) the invaluable knack of cutting sound directly out over the orchestra. As the mismatched lovers, Jenufa and steva, Teresa Kubiak and William Lewis gave the impression that they had vocal intelligence and power to spare. A simple matter perhaps, but it allows the listener to turn off his nerves and absorb the music. Laca was sung by Jon Vickers. It can only be said that his performance matched Janadek's intentions subtlety for subtlety, fury for fury. He became the man who would poison his beloved's little rosemary plant, attack her, and remain constant through both scorn and acceptance--the glory and dupe of the world. .Martha Duffy

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