AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• Modern Era
• Opera

First performed on 21 January 1904 in Brno, Jenůfa was later revised and in 1916 received its first performance in Prague under the direction of Karel Kovarovic. He only agreed to direct the opera after submitting to persuasive pressure from friends and colleagues, but he also insisted on making changes to the orchestration. Kovarovic’s revised Jenůfa became the accepted ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

of Sabina’s libretto created a vogue for the depiction of comic events in the Bohemian countryside, which was only supplanted by the realism favoured by Janáček in his opera Jenůfa (1904). It is interesting that in an opera which seems to epitomize nationalism, the word setting is often very awkward. Like many of his contemporaries, Smetana was primarily ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

his mark by fostering musical life in the Moravian capital Brno as teacher and conductor, and by collecting and publishing folksong. His musical voice crystallized in the realist opera Jenůfa, given its successful premiere in 1904. A late starter, he consolidated his style in music for piano and choir, and two more operas, over the next ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

Mackerras and John Tyrrell has produced definitive editions from numerous versions of the composer’s original scores. First Significant Opera The impetus for Janáček to write his first significant opera, Jenůfa (1903), came from an earlier, lesser work, his one-act The Beginning of a Romance (1891). Jenůfa’s bleak, depressing story of village life was based on Gabriela Preissová’s ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

of Ariadne auf Naxos and the empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten by Richard Strauss. She also sang Marietta in Korngold’s Die tote Stadt and the title role in Janáček’s Jenůfa, and performed at the Met between 1921 and 1932, where her Tosca was renowned. Whereas Jeritza’s feminine allure proved irresistible to many of her conductors, composers and ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Modern Era

his operas have, since World War II, been joined in the international repertory by those of Janáček. Janáček broke early from the restrictive mould of Czech nationalist opera; Jenůfa was the first of eight mature essays in the genre, strikingly diverse, at times idiosyncratic, in their subject matter, but sustained by music of often glowing ...