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Coincidences
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Long Beach Opera's Coincidences
Here are some things to keep in mind and some things to do before (and after) you attend
Jenufa. Check your Czech Your Czech/English dictionary will tell you the difference between a Kostelnicka and a Kabanica. Attend an LBO Coincidence Prior to both performances of Jenufa Czech baritone Tomas Badura sings a brief concert of Moravian songs. You'll hear the gnarled consonants and clipped syllables of real Czech that you can compare to the long vowels and sustained lines of the Italian you have just heard in Puccini's Turandot (although there wasn't a real Italian in sight). For further musical comparisons of language note the difference between Hungarian folksongs where the words are characteristically accented on the first syllable and the French chanson where accents fall on the final syllable. Unutterable Sorrow
is the title of one of the piano pieces in Janácek's series "On an Overgrown Path" (dates of compositions unknown).
Jenufa is strongly linked with the death of Janácek's daughter Olga. There are other musical works to listen to with similar ties to the loss of a young loved one. Mahler's "Kindertoten-lieder" closely presaged the death of his eldest daughter, Maria Anna. Berg wrote his violin concerto in memory of Alma Mahler's teenage daughter, Manon Gropius. More obliquely, Debussy wrote the "Children's Corner" for his young daughter Chou-Chou. A decade later, on his deathbed, Debussy reportedly wondered, "What will become of my little Chou-Chou?" She followed him to the grave a year later. Hollywood in the 1930s began producing movies that were psychologically aware, perhaps influenced by Freudian analysis just as modernist opera and literature had been since the beginning of the century. Film noir mystery was a part of this new wave, but romance stories were also informed by the inner play of the mind -- in how characters came to terms with one another and also with themselves. In "The Enchanted Cottage," Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire play two physically and emotionally flawed people who begin to see each other in a very different light as they come under the spell of love, at once underscoring the idea that "love is blind" and that love sees much more than the merely visible. In "Random Harvest," amnesia victim Ronald Colman instinctively senses that the void (his forgotten life with Greer Garson) is the subconscious key to his happiness just as his present (conscious) life with her is comfortable but meaningless. Sophie's Choice In deciding to murder Jenufa and Steva's baby boy so that Jenufa might have a chance at a happy life with Laca, the Kostelnicka is confronted with a Hobson's choice in which her strong moral ethos and her humanist compassion work both together and against one another. The recent movie "Sophie's Choice" finds a young mother in circumstances that force her to make an impossible moral decision of similar magnitude. For the art film crowd The theme of antagonistically furtive love, like Laca's mocking attitude toward Jenufa, has parallels in two recent art films, "Remains of the Day" and "Un Coeur en Hiver." Laca's fate is more happy-ever-after than either of the two losers in these movies, but the idea of love and conscious denial that runs through all three dramas is powerful and resonant because they are common experiences. Jealousy and knifing, themes that run through Jenufa, intrigued Janácek. Evidence of this can be seen in his settings of the song "Na horách, na dolách" ("In the Hills, In the Valleys"), originally from Susil's "Collection of Moravian Folk Songs" (No. 124). In it, a jealous young man attempts to slash a girl with his sabre (just as Laca cuts Jenufa's face with his dagger). He also used the words of the same song in his quasi-dramatic male chorus "The Jealous Man" (1888). His 1893 chorus "Wreath" (also for male voices) deals with thwarted love and lost innocence and bears thematic similarities to "The Jealous Man." The world over Jenufa's facial disfigurement at the hands of Laca (and Steva's revulsion) recalls the rash of acid attacks against Cambodian women in recent years. The motive is similar - jealousy - though the circumstances are a little different. The Cambodian scenario runs like so: men in high ranking political or military positions commonly take two "wives," an official wife and a sexy, younger playmate - usually a singer, actress or bar maid of otherwise modest means whose only bankable currency is her looks. The real wife gets jealous, hires some gorillas to accost the other woman and hold her down while she has her vengeance by pouring several bottles of caustic acid over the young woman's face and head. A Phnom Penh human rights group, Licadho, recorded 20 such attacks against the lovers of philandering husbands last year. Growing up Jenufa could be considered a romance in which the two lovers undergo psychic trials -- Jenufa in her forgiveness of Laca, the unfaithful Steva and the murderess Kostelnicka. Both emerge as adults with a fuller understanding of their lives. Catch some other operas on "growing up" -- Tamino and Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute, Candide and Cunegonde in Bernstein's Candide, the couples in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and don't overlook Faber and Thea in Tippett's The Knot Garden. Village verismo The themes of infanticide, thwarted love, remorse, redemption and reunion that run through Jenufa can be found in Birtwistle's Punch and Judy, though it takes a mighty stretch of imagination to compare this grotesque burlesque to Janácek's Moravian tragedy. For serious students of opera When he composed Jenufa (1903), Janácek claimed he had written the first opera set on a prose text. You'll want to dispute his statement. Consider Dargomizhsky's Stone Guest (1872), Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (1874), Charpentier's Louise (1900), Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and soon followed by Strauss' Salome. Her Stepdaughter on which Janácek based Jenufa was one of two early plays written by Gabriela Preissova that spawned operas. Josef Bohuslav Foerster's Eva is based on "The Farm Manager's Woman." Both plays were reportedly provocative, and the two operas enjoyed success, though Jenufa is the one that survives. If you can find a recording, compare the musical styles of these two roughly contemporary composers -- the modernist Janácek (1854-1928) and the conservative romantic Foerster (1859-1951). Rustic Czech literature was influential on the artistic and nationalistic sensibilities of Janácek and his compatriots. Examine, if you can find translations (or if you read Czech), the idyllic Czech and Slovak folk tales of Bozena Nemcová (1820-1862), the gritty psychological realism of Karolina Svetlá (1830-1899) and Preissová's (1862-1946) dialect-laden plays. A Moravian monastery provided early education for both Janácek and the 19th century Moravian Grego Mendel who did pioneering genetic research on peas. Science writer Colin Tudge has recently written "The Impact of the Gene: From Mendel's Peas to Designer Babies" (Hill & Wang, 2001). The book is both a biography of Mendel and a drum-beating pamphlet for evolutionary psychology, which argues (in one reviewer's words) "that humans are genetically predisposed to behaviors ranging from altruism to xenophobia." Tudge cites a Canadian study that found that children are more likely to be murdered by stepparents than by their biological parents (shades of Jenufa's stepmother, the Kostelnicka). How the tale ends, finally Gabriela Preissová wrote a follow-up novel on the Jenufa subject in 1930, enlarging on the story and expanding its time span from a few months to three generations. A jury sentenced Kostelnicka to two years in prison. "They listened and gave their hearts to the words she uttered in her defense, and they knew the unhappy woman had acted in a moment of insanity. They all were moved by the fact that she did not deny any guilt." Laca and Jenufa visited Kostelnicka many times in prison, and when she was released they took her away to a town where no one knew their story. Eventually, Jenufa became pregnant again, "and when Laca revealed that, she turned pale and trembled from head to foot." But Kostelnicka died of a heart attack before the new baby arrived. Like Spillville, Iowa, the town of West, Texas, though located in the center of the state, is a community with a significant Czech population and culture. First inhabited in the 1840s, the town attracted large numbers of immigrants by the late 19th century, and it continues to be defined by its strong folk and nationalist heritage. Among its various Czech-themed businesses are bakeries, restaurants, a glass shop, a smoked meat shop and a gift shop called Czech Point. Every Labor Day weekend, the townspeople hold a Czech festival called Westfest that is the major local attraction. Kick back now, I'm sure this has been all too much But one last thing to say -- Janácek's Jenufa was part of a universal trend in early 20th century art in which artists made an effort to combine modern means of expression with folk culture. In the spirit of putting old wine into new bottles (or new wine into old bottles), the mix of the new and the folkloric carried music to audacious new heights in the works of Bartók, Kodály, early Stravinsky, Falla, and others (in art, Chagall; in theater and poetry, Garcia Lorca). So pour yourself a glass of a fine new wine from a pretty, old bottle, put a Falla [fy-ya] or Kodaly [ko-die] CD on the stereo or a film noir [knew-ah(r)] in the VCR, and prepare yourself for Jenufa [yeah'-knew-fuh].
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