Word: katrena
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...rarely seen by Western critics until its production this month at East Berlin's State Opera. It will be staged in Belgrade, Budapest, and in the Soviet Union, eventually may find its way West. The opera's plot concerns the trials of a Slovakian peasant girl named Katrena whose lover is found murdered in a forest clearing. At first suspected, Katrena is later cleared and promptly marries an earlier suitor named Ondrej. When she bears a child ahead of schedule, Ondrej flies into a jealous rage, reveals in a drunken soliloquy that he is the murderer, later confesses...
...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 in the standard operatic literature...
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