Word: ek
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Today Janacek is ranked among the most original of 20th century composers. His bristly textures seem attuned to the turmoil of modern life; his fascination with the melodic patterns of speech, bird calls and animal cries appeals to contemporary music's interest in sounds. Janáček's chilling opera, The Makropoulos Affair, about a glamorous woman cursed with a 300-year life span, has recently been performed in San Francisco and at the New York City Opera. The Metropolitan Opera and Santa Fe have also staged major Janáček productions...
...Janacek at age 27 married one of his students, 16-year-old Zdenka Schulz, and lived unhappily ever after. Despite two children, Janacek humiliated his wife with his spectacular philandering. In less amorous moments, he found time to compose three minor operas and The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, a light, satirical tale about a flight to the moon and the Hussite wars of the 15th century. He also wrote one powerful but somber verismo work: Jenufa, the story of a village girl made pregnant by the local womanizer, whose formidable foster mother kills her baby...
...ek's musical genius did not really bloom until he was 63. Then he fell madly in love with Kamilla Stoesslova, the pretty young wife of an antique dealer. Although the composer always contended that their love was platonic, hundreds of steamy letters, discreetly tucked away in the local Janáček Museum, seem to belie his claim. The affair inspired a unique musical outburst. By the time he died at age 74 (some say while pursuing a woman through a nearby woods), Janáček had written four blazingly original operas, orchestral pieces and chamber music...
Much of the talent was from Czechoslovakia: the Brno State Theater, which originally staged most of Janáček's operas; the Brno State Philharmonic; the Czech Philharmonic; scores of folk singers and choirs. The Czech Philharmonic, one of the grander Old World orchestras, offered a smoothed-out, spruced-up version of the composer's music, while the more regional Brno orchestra left the burr in Janáček's rough edges. Lacking singers of international caliber, the Brno ensemble fared poorly in such star vehicles as The Makropoulos Affair. But Mr. Brouček...
Ironically, the hottest tickets in town were to Janáček's three weak operas (Šárka, The Beginning of a Romance, Fate), collectors' items so rarely performed or recorded that they virtually had to be heard in Brno...