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to the opera-going public almost exclusively in the version prepared for the 1916
Prague première by Kovařovic, a version published by Universal Edition in 1917–18
(UE 1917 and UE 1918) which enjoyed a monopoly in stage productions for more
than seven decades. 7 Even J.M. Dürr’s 1969 edition of the score (UE 1969) preserved
— and in some cases added to — Kovařovic’s revised orchestration. 8 In the early
1980s Sir Charles Mackerras began the difficult task of paring away the layers of
revisions to Janáček’s score, 9 but the complex nature of the surviving manuscript
sources meant that it was to be a further fourteen years before a reliable representation
of the pre-Kovařovic score could be issued. With the publication in 1996 of an edition
prepared by Mackerras and Tyrrell (UE 1996), we have a more complete picture than
ever of the score as Janáček himself left it before Kovařovic’s intervention. 10 The
increasing use by many international opera houses of the Mackerras-Tyrrell edition
has already proved how successful Janáček’s score in its pre-Kovařovic state can be.
The version of Jenůfa heard at the 1904 première has, however, proved as
elusive as the Kovařovic version was tenacious, a result largely of the extreme
thoroughness with which subsequent revisions were carried out in the surviving
7 UE 1917 was published in December 1917 (plate number UE 5651), UE 1918 in September 1918
(plate number UE 6001); see JaWo, 16. The ‘prototype’ of the Mackerras-Tyrrell edition (see below)
was first heard in public at the Glyndebourne Festival on 19 May 1989.
8 UE 1969 includes further modifications to the score made by later conductors including Erich Kleiber
and Václav Talich; see Dürr 1968.
9 This had been attempted previously only by Hynek Kašlík in the 1930s, leading to broadcast
performances of excerpts in 1941 (see below). Mackerras’s initial performing version of the cleaned-
up Jenůfa, which led in turn to UE 1996, was first heard at the Paris Opéra in November 1980 and was
subsequently recorded by him for Decca in Vienna in April 1982 (first released on LP and cassette in
1983).
10 Leoš Janáček, Jenůfa/Její pastorkyňa: Brněnská verze (1908) ed. Sir Charles Mackerras and John
Tyrrell (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1996); four years later, Universal Edition issued the corresponding
vocal score (UE 2000).
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