Jenůfa

Jenůfa is good-hearted and beautiful: admired by everyone in her Moravian village and the pride and joy of her devoted stepmother, the formidable Kostelnička, or church warden. Although Janáček’s 1904 breakthrough opera is drenched in the atmosphere (and musical speech patterns) of rural Moravia, it’s no sanitised folk opera. The Buryja family has a mill to run, but its two sons are jealous and reckless, and the unmarried Jenůfa is secretly pregnant. Scandal looms, and a desperate Kostelnička steels herself to protect her stepdaughter’s future, whatever the cost. That’s one of the keys to Jenůfa, known in the West by the name of its young heroine but called Její pastorkyňa (Her Stepdaughter) by Janáček himself. Its characters are not operatic stereotypes but flawed, evolving human beings. And one of Jenůfa’s most gripping qualities is the way the Czech composer subverts audiences’ prejudices, such as the forbidding Kostelnička emerging as both villain and tragic heroine. Janáček, at the first peak of his mature powers, brings them to life in music of bristling energy and emotional directness. Intimate but unsentimental, passionate without being melodramatic and capable of heart-piercing, redemptive tenderness and compassion, this is an opera for grownups, from one of the 20th century’s most original—and relatable—musical dramatists.