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production. 63 The first serious attempt to address the issue of the ‘original’ 1904
version came in the groundbreaking research of Bohumír Štědroň, in a series of
articles culminating in his seminal work Zur Genesis von Leoš Janáčeks Oper Jenůfa
(see BIBLIOGRAPHY, ZGJ). Long regarded as the definitive study of the opera’s
genesis, Štědroň’s research influenced generations of musicologists, and must still be
regarded as required reading for anyone attempting to get to grips with the textual and
musical issues of the work.
Štědroň made a detailed and perceptive study of the principal sources, in
particular the manuscript vocal score copied by Štross (ŠVS) and the manuscript
libretto used by the prompter at the early performances (LB). He was able to give the
most detailed attention to those passages that had been cut by Janáček, since most of
these were still clearly legible, having simply been crossed through; he also made
important and largely successful attempts to decipher many erasures. At the same
time, he acknowledged the difficulty of recovering the many passages covered up by
pasted-over strips of manuscript paper. Moreover, Štědroň’s discussion of those parts
of the 1904 version that he could determine — and indeed his attitude towards the
1904 version as a whole, however fragmentary his view of it — was also strongly
influenced by his understandable desire to argue the case for Janáček’s own revised
(1908) version of the score. This was, after all, a time when Kovařovic’s version of
the opera still held a monopoly in opera houses and Janáček’s last version of the score
was as good as unknown.
With the exception of a few broadcast excerpts, these attempts to discover and
rehabilitate the pre-Kovařovic Jenůfa had little impact on the opera in performance.
63 It would also have incorporated some of Kovařovic’s early changes; see Tyrrell 1996, x / Tyrrell
2000, v–vi.
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