Sixty years ago the celebrated Czech composer Leos Janacek died at the age of seventy-four. Most musical anniversaries provide a useful occasion for reassessment, and none more so than Janacek's, for the operatic world is still coming to terms with the astonishing flood of creativity that characterized his final decade.
To describe Janacek as idiosyncratic is an understatement. His music, instrumentation, and choice of librettos bear little resemblance to the work of any composer before or after him. Known for most of his life as a conductor, organist, and teacher in the Moravian town of Brno, he had to wait until his third opera, Jenufa, was performed in Prague and Vienna in 1916 and 1918 before he won any form of national or international recognition. This success at the age of sixty-two, combined with the formation of the Czechoslovak republic and the development of a friendship with a married woman less than half his age, gave him the confidence to write a series of new works, shaping the creative pattern of his final ten years. Between 1917 and 1928, Janacek completed The Adventures of Mr. Broucek and wrote four other operatic master pieces (Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropoulos Affair, and From the House of the Dead), as well as important non operatic works such as the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass, and several chamber works.
Janacek's early works belong to the nineteenth-century world of Dvorak and Smetana. From Jenufa onward, his own unmistakable mature style developed, with music based on short bursts of melody, strongly rhythmic, rooted in the brusque repetitive phrases of his own language, growing form simple tonal and harmonic origins into powerful emotional climaxes. He was the first Czech composer to break out of the nationalist mold. Jenufa is based on Czech village life, but his later works reach out to other worlds, showing a strong awareness of the seasons and natural forces, characterized by intense emotions and filled with Janacek's compassion for all forms of humanity.
Even though Janacek's operas have found their way into the repertoire of most of the world's major companies over the past forty years, several factors have prevented his works from winning wide popularity. The words of the operas need to be understood but do not translate easily. Janacek's unusual instrumentation and complex cross-rhythms need precise and careful elucidation in performance, which often necessitates additional rehearsal time. His music is recognizably that of the twentieth century and needs a matching quality of dramatic realism if it is to overcome the resistance of conservation audiences.
Barriers Coming Down
A series of recent performances in Europe of Janacke's operas indicates that many of the remaining barriers to a wide appreciation of his genius are being broken down. In London last February, a highly successful production of Jenufa by exiled Russian director Yuri Lyubimov was seen at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with American soprano Ashley Putnam in the title role. In March, a Janacek festival was organized in Paris, with special concerts by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, a staging of Katya Kabanova at the Opera with Karan Armstrong in the title role and a new production of From the House of the Dead at the Opera-Comique, conducted by the internationally renowned Janacek authority Sir Charles MacKerras. In May, the Glyndebourne Festival in southern
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