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(particularly in textural terms) clarity and focus. Yet the 1904 version itself reveals
some unexpected anticipations of Janáček’s later style, anticipations which, not yet
fully developed, were suppressed in the composer’s own revisions. This is most
notable in the case of the Kostelnička’s ‘Už od té chvíle’, discussed above. But even
her Act 1 aria, a narrative monologue whose excision enhanced both the opera’s
dramatic flow and its Naturalist qualities, can be seen to contain the seeds of
Janáček’s last opera, which is built not around a conventional dramatic narrative, but
rather on a succession of just such monologues.
The 1904 version of Jenůfa offers us the prospect of being able to see, and
indeed hear — more clearly than has been possible until now — many details of the
opera’s revision history that had, through the passage of time and the very
thoroughness of the revisions themselves, become obscured. As well as serving as a
terminus post et ante quem for specific details and indeed whole passages of the
musical text, it also enables a more finely honed appraisal of the changes made at
various stages in the work’s twenty-three-year evolution (1893–1916). Details that
were once hard to pin down to any particular date can now be assigned
chronologically with much greater certainty, even though our understanding of some
of the finer points – most notably the precise development of the detail in the vocal
lines – will always be to some extent necessarily approximate.
Yet, beyond the greater clarity given to the various readings that emerge from
the manuscript sources themselves, a larger picture also emerges. For Jenůfa was
composed and revised during a crucial period in Janáček’s life, and in his musical and
specifically operatic development, breaking away from the narrow confines of the
dominant Czech subgenres and nineteenth-century conventions, and moving towards
an operatic vision at once more powerful and more relevant to the aesthetic, cultural
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