Word: jenufa
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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 Gré Brouwenstijn) Jenufa proved...
Composer Suchon, who also worked on the libretto, fleshed the bare bones of his plot with some moving psychological insights. The libretto was admirably supplemented by Suchon's muscular score, which reminded the enthusiastic audience of the music of Czechoslovakia's Leos (Jenufa) Janacek and Hungary's Bela Bartok. Strongly rhythmic, it combined rich Slovakian folk flavor with pungently powerful orchestration. In Katrena's lament over her fate, strikingly sung by Soprano Anny Schlemm, and in Ondrej's affecting admission of guilt, Suchon provided crowd-rousing vocal high points that might well place The Vortex...
...surpass light-timbred Dramatic Soprano Gre Brouwenstijn, 41, as an interpreter of Verdi. She was a rising star in Dutch radio and opera just before the war but did not get her big chance until 1946, when The Netherlands Opera signed her. She made her reputation in // Tro-vatore, Jenufa, branched into Wagnerian opera at Bayreuth with resounding success, is currently one of the busiest stars on this summer's festival circuit...
...years ago she was an offstage voice at the Berlin State Opera; she is now under contract with Berlin for two more seasons. She made her first successes as Princess Eboli in Verdi's Don Carlo, and the Sexton's Widow in Leos Janacek's Jenufa, made her debut at the Metropolitan last spring as Eboli, will return there for several guest appearances next season. In Europe she has been such a spectacular overnight success, notes one British critic, that "she has only to be announced to fill the house...