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I am so taken up and overworked with the final revision [‘poslední revisí’] of my
opera that I want just now to go off to Prague to see Bizet’s witty opera Djamileh. 34
Six days later he wrote to Mrs Urválková again:
Yesterday at least was one of the joyful days. I have had few of them in my life.
Perhaps that ‘Highest Justice’ has after all turned to me with a smiling face?
Jenůfa.
The Directorate of the National Theatre in Brno sent for the score of my opera
When they took it away, the servant had something to carry on his shoulders! At
the same time it seemed to me as if they had taken away my soul from so many sad
years. 35
1.3 Première and early performances
As suggested by Janáček’s letter to Mrs Urválková of 3 October 1903, Janáček had
already made revisions to the opera before he handed the score over to the Brno
National Theatre on 8 October 1903, and some of these were (as will become clear)
substantial. 36 It was this first revised version that was now copied out and eventually
34 Němcová 1974, 135. Janáček saw Bizet’s one-act opéra comique that evening at the Prague National
Theatre in a double bill with Vilém Blodek’s V studni [In the well]; JYL i, 562.
35 JODA, JP20.
36 The extent, nature, and even existence of these revisions had until recently long been a mystery.
Most commentators have followed Štědroň’s lead (in ZGJ and Štědroň 1968b) in regarding the version
of Jenůfa performed at the première as the ‘first’ version. Although Janáček’s letter of 3 October 1903
was known to Štědroň (Štědroň 1959, 165–6), Němcová and Tyrrell, the first serious attempt to identify
the pre-première revisions mentioned in it was only possible as a result of work on the present project;
see Audus 1996. For a more detailed description and evaluation of some of the features of the pre-1904
Jenůfa, see CHAPTER 3, §3.1. As discussed below, many of these revisions were extensive, and were
by no means confined to the earlier composed Act 1.
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