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een cut before the première. 46 Three factors, however, point against this. Firstly,
there are clear signs that this scene was at least looked at in rehearsal (there are, for
example, indications for fingering in the violin 1 and viola parts). Taking into account
the short rehearsal period before the première, these annotations suggest that the
passage was also played in performance. Second, there are similarities between the
notation of this cut and others in the OP string parts which were clearly made in 1906.
Finally, there is no indication in LB (in use until 1905) that this passage was cut:
indeed, there are even some corrections made to this passage which strongly support
the idea of its use in performance (see above, §2.1, LB). Since LB, which appears to
have been copied out from ŠVS, contains detailed annotations of bars’ rest, word
repetitions, and occasional emendations and corrections, it seems on balance unlikely
that such an extensive cut would have been left completely unmarked. 47 APPENDIX IV
gives details of all the cuts made to ŠVS and the OP string parts by autumn 1906.
Given that the original orchestral parts were prepared with such haste, it is
hardly surprising that, apart from the occasional correction, relatively few changes
were made to the performing material during the initial run of performances. 48 What
emerges from a study of the OP string parts is that the only substantial changes made
by October 1906 were straightforward cuts: the first significant changes to the textual
46 Němcová 1974, 134–5; Němcová 1984, 26–7.
47 The aria itself appears in both UE 1969 and UE 1996 / 2000: the success it has enjoyed in
performance disguises the fact that in both these editions it is an anomaly (as acknowledged in Tyrrell
1996, xvi–xvii / Tyrrell 2000, ix), for the OP string parts show that it was certainly cut from the opera
by 1906. Neither of these editions, however, includes the preceding orchestral interlude on the so-
called ‘reminiscence motif’ (I/v/210–18) which was certainly excised at the same time (see ZGJ, 85–6);
this passage was included in an undated (1950s/60s?) Czech Radio recording of the Kostelnička’s aria,
kindly made available to me by John Tyrrell, but does not feature on the more recent recording of the
aria on Supraphon’s Čekám tě: Janáček unknown (Supraphon 11 1878-2 931, recorded 1994).
48 See Němcová 1974, 137; JODA, 52–3. Tyrrell suggests that the first full rehearsal of Act 1 may have
taken place as late as 19 January 1904 (JODA, 54).
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