Lyric Opera 2023-2024 Issue 4 - Jenufa

25 | Lyric Opera of Chicago Leoš Janáˇcek’s Jen˚ufa combines bold musical originality with stunning insight into concrete characters who are forced to grapple with difficult ethical and emotional dilemmas. Also called Její pastorkyˇna (Her Stepdaughter, from the title of a stage play by Gabriela Preissová, produced in 1890, that was the composer’s basis for his libretto), Jen ˚ufa, Janáˇcek’s first opera, had its premiere in January 1904—in Brno, because personal enmity had denied the composer a premiere in Prague. At first only a local success, it eventually became an international triumph in 1916 with its Prague premiere (in an inferior revised version, now never performed, made by a fashionable conductor), when the composer was over 60 years old. Jen ˚ufa took its composer nine years to write, and it was completed during a time of great personal tragedy; his daughter, Olga, age 20, died of typhoid fever in 1903. (His only other child, a son, had died young in 1890.) Olga, always frail, took a passionate interest in the opera during its composition, imploring her father to play it for her on the piano because, she said, “I won’t live to hear it.” It is dedicated to her memory. Janáˇcek (1854–1928), born in the small Moravian town of Hukvaldy, is one of three distinguished Czech composers of this period, the other two being Dvorˇák (1841–1904) and Smetana (1824–1884). He is the only one to be Moravian rather than Bohemian, and the customs and people of Moravia were dear to him throughout By Martha C. Nussbaum Jenu˚fa’s Radical Love At its core, the work is a searing tale of profound forgiveness. Asmik Grigorian as Jenu˚fa and Nicky Spence as Laca in the Royal Opera House production. Tristram Kenton/Royal Opera House