sources - Nottingham eTheses - The University of Nottingham

London audiences at the time, 54 But Heyworth’s comparisons, with Káťa Kabanová,
Příhody lišky Bystroušky [The cunning little vixen] (I/9) and Z mrtvého domu, were
typically well-informed. They unfavourably highlight the lack of ‘concision and
directness’ in Jenůfa, focusing particularly on the ‘Každý párek’ ensemble in Act 1
and the commotion at the end of the same Act following the slashing of Jenůfa’s
cheek: ‘[…] a wiser Janacek would have brought down the curtain [immediately] after
Laca has slashed Jenufa’s face. We know very well what has happened and why, so
that there is no need for Grandmother Buryja et al. to run in and sing “Oh, what has
happened?”’ 55 Such passages are, Heyworth concludes, ‘precisely the sort of operatic
superfluity that Janacek learned later to dispense with.’
The version of Jenůfa performed at Covent Garden in 1956 was, of course, the
by then ‘standard’ Kovařovic version of 1916 (as published by Universal Edition in
1917–18). Heyworth’s criticisms are, however, pertinent to the opera in any of its
versions, for, despite its now near-universal popularity, Jenůfa is hardly Janáček’s
most representative opera. (How one talks about representative works at all in so
concentratedly varied and idiosyncratic an oeuvre is another question entirely.)
Whilst it certainly demonstrates a markedly more developed musico-dramatic sense
than its apprenticeship predecessors, Šárka and Počátek románu, in many respects
Jenůfa anticipates — rather than fully embodies — the more radical language, both
musical and dramatic, of Janáček’s operatic maturity, or even of its immediate
54 Of the composer’s other operas, only Káťa Kabanová had already been heard there (first produced at
Covent Garden in April 1951), and Janáček’s music in general was then still a largely unknown
quantity for British music lovers.
55 Heyworth’s strictures are not limited to the earlier-composed Act 1. His observation that ‘Almost the
whole of the second Act of “Jenufa” and the latter half of the third are as gripping and moving as
anything Janacek ever wrote’ is followed by the qualification: ‘But for the rest the opera is too diffuse
and too laboriously plastered with local colour à la Smetana to make the overall impact of “Katya.”’
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