Word: ek
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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 Janáček'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 Janáček. 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...
...When Kostelniča realizes that števa 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. Janáček in middle age seemed able to summon back the passions of youth and apply the judgment of experience to their consequences...
...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 Janáček. 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...
Despite the repetitions, the discursiveness, the sometimes labored irony, Švejk/Hašek speaks vividly to a new generation that is disillusioned with power, glory and war. The reader gets the feeling that he can begin anywhere in the book, stop anywhere, and still get the essence of it. For the essence is Švejk, and Švejk travels well...