CHAPTER 4
Kátja  Kabanová

Introduction
The Overture
The Story and Music of Act 1, Scene I
The Story and Music of Act 1, Scene 2
Relation of the Play to the Opera: Act I
The Story of Act II
Relation of the Play to the Opera: Act II
The Music of Act II
The Story of Act III
Relation of the Play to the Opera: Act III
The Music of Act III

Introduction

As with The Makropulos Case, Janáček chose an existing play as the subject of his seventh opera, Ostrovsky's Burya ("The Storm"), a tale of provincial Russian life in the middle of the nineteenth century.
In a remote town on the banks of the Volga lives the strange and unhappy family of Kabanov. The family is domineered by the rich merchant's widow, Madame Kabanová, who takes perverse delight in humiliating her weak son, Tikhon, and even more so in persecuting Kátja, his gentle, sensitive, beautiful but inwardly rebellious young wife, who is the heroine of the story.
In the same town lives also Dikoy, a rich merchant and important personage who likewise finds sadistic pleasure in bullying and humiliating his rather colourless nephew, Boris.
Inevitably, these two victims of family tyranny come together and a dangerous friendship develops between Kátja and Boris. Kátja's husband loves his wife but is unable to protect her from the continually vicious attacks of his jealous and vindictive mother who hates Kátja for coming between her and her son.
A much lighter love intrigue is going on between Varvara, Tikhon's frivolous young sister, and the young tutor, Kudrjáš: although Varvara counsels Kátja to give way to the dictates of her heart, Kátja steadfastly refuses to do so. When she learns that her husband is going away on a journey she pleads with him to remain with her, but to no avail. In his absence she meets Boris and these two gentle, sensitive, storm-tossed souls-prisoners in an alien atmosphere of suspicion, cruelty and oppressive religious superstition-find consolation in giving expression to their mutual love. But Kátja is tormented by a guilty conscience and, during a thunderstorm which terrifies her, is moved to make a public confession of her sin. She ends her misery by throwing herself into the Volga.
Ostrovsky's sombre story of hate, love, suspicion and intrigue is played out with the ever-Rowing waters of the River Volga in the back-ground as a symbol of eternity, of destiny, of limitless freedom,
Alexander Ostrovsky was born in Moscow in 1823; his father belonged to the merchant class and the young Ostrovsky had, therefore, ample opportunity to study the customs, beliefs and manners which prevailed among the merchant class.
After studying law at the University, Ostrovsky worked for a number of years at the Moscow courts. When he was 24 his first plays appeared, one of which so incensed the merchants that they took action and had him placed under police surveillance. After a five-year period of silence, he resumed writing and up till his death in 1886, had written nearly fifty plays.
The novels of Tolstoy and Turgenev dealt mainly with the lives of the nobility and the peasants: it was left to Ostrovsky to reveal the shortcomings and the strong points of the merchant class.
By general consent 'The Storm' is his masterpiece. Mme Kabanová and Dikoy represent the tradition of the older generation with their roots in the feudal system, demanding absolute obedience from all around them. Boris and Kátja are of the younger and liberal-minded generation who strive for "freedom of expression, liberty of action and a more equitable division of authority". (Ivor Spector, The Golden Art of Russian Literature, p. 196 (Caxton Printers, 1945).
Like much of Janáček's own libretto writing, Ostrovsky wrote in a local vernacular dialect which makes his plays almost impossible to translate into other languages: as a result of this he has been misunderstood and misquoted and, until recent years, much underrated outside his own country.
There was an interval of about two years between Janáček finishing his burlesque opera I he Adventures of Mr. Brouček (1917) and starting to write Kátja, which occupied him from November 1919 until February 1921.
In the interval he wrote several choruses for women's voices, twenty-six folk-dances, the popular orchestral rhapsody Taras Bulba, another symphonic poem The Ballad of Blanik and Zápisník Zmizelého for tenor, contralto, women's chamber choir and piano solo, known in English-speaking countries as The Diary of One Who Vanished.
The suggestion that Janáček might turn Ostrovsky's play The Storm into an opera came from an assistant director of the Brno Theatre, Václav Jiříkovsky, who early in 1919 most obligingly staged a special production of the play at his theatre so that Janáček-their greatest Moravian composer-could see its operatic possibilities in the best possible light.
Janáček was much impressed and decided to fashion his own libretto from the Czech translation of Vicenc Cervinka. In order to avoid confusion with other stage works named "The Storm", "The Tempest", and so on, he took the advice of Gustav Schmoranz, director of the Prague National Theatre, to whom Janáček was principally indebted for the Prague première of Jenůfa, and called his opera Kátja  Kabanová.
Janáček cut down the play from five acts to three acts, each with two scenes. The compression on the whole is brilliantly done, for in the shortened version, it allows time and space for the music to expand, to emphasize the emotional tenseness of the drama, to underline the psychological relationships of the characters and evoke a sensitive portrayal of the sweeping Volga.

The Overture

The overture begins softly on a long gloomy indecisive second inversion chord of B flat minor, melting into a motif of pathos: a sinister drum figure is then heard on timpani while muted trombones hold the same triad.
No 124

Beginning without the first long chord, the motif of pathos and the timpani figure are repeated. The poignancy of the theme is emphasized in a rhythmical variation
No 125

Note the relationship of the two chords to the rhythmic accentuation in the melody which itself has a subtle revision of accent grouping when the phrase (A) is repeated... tapering off rather helplessly. Janáček's melodies are noted for their rhythmical understatement: feminine endings which often taper off unexpectedly.
No. 125 is (a) repeated, (b) shortened, (c) expanded and quickened when, in a sudden 5 piu mosso, as a dominant single-melody line (A), it rises quickly to a series of sforzando chords, the sixth being the centre chord of B flat minor (on trombones again) at which the fatalistic No. 124 thunders out ominously.
The mood instantly changes to a gay quasi-Russian folk tune with troika bell colourings
No 126

This melody is later associated with Tikhon's journey, and a welcome release from his oppressive home life.
It is possible to relate an astonishing number of motifs in this opera to a &w basic ones. I have already shown examples of this procedure in the three operas analysed. One does not know, however, how much of this variation procedure is a conscious planning on Janáček's part and how much is accidental or at least subconscious. Take, for instance, the jolly troika theme of No. 126 and compare it with the foreboding timpani figure of No. 124. In mood no two themes could be more dissimilar, yet, as they both begin with four times the note F and four times the note B flat, they are obviously related in some respects.
What is the value of this relation? Dramatically it can have none, unless one invents some deep psychological undergrowth of erudite content: musically it is of no significance, as it matters not a jot whether Janáček uses the notes F and B flat to begin his Russian jig or invents something quite different.
Music is heard as rhythm which carries a melody (not the other way round): take any well-known tune and play around with its rhythm and it is ten to one the original tune will be unrecognizable. No one knew the truth of this fact better than Janáček: over and over again we have seen him write two or more dramatically different themes but using the same series of notes for them all. This may provide an overall thematic unity to a work or a section of a work, at least to the analytical eye of a student and the subconsciousness of a listener. But that in many cases, it is more than just a habit with Janáček, 1, for one, take leave to doubt. In this analysis, unless any such metamorphosis of themes is of obvious dramatic or musical content, I prefer to ignore the resemblance.
During the short troika episode in the overture, the timpani softly booms out its No. 124 (with the complementary trombone chords). A new section begins with a very rapid sextuplet figure (on strings) [5] ushering in a frightening little (muted) trumpet-call-echoed on oboe and clarinet. (Vogel accepts this sextuplet as parent to at least ten different themes.) The rapid figuration continues and accompanies another quasi-Russian theme. This slightly sentimental tune, tinged with a touch of melancholy
No. 127

is later in the scene associated with Kátja herself. The theme is developed at some length: No. I and the fiery trumpet figure are also woven into the texture. One notes a certain solidity in the harmonies over a series of pedal basses (for example, [5] to [6] is over a low F: the first seven and a half bars after [6] are all on the chord of B flat minor: from [7] until the curtain rises omitting the two cadence bars before [10]-thirty bars are over a D flat-C sharp). By using only one foundation chord (E flat major) in the beginning of his Rheingold, Wagner gave a vivid picture of the roaring, whirling, restless waters of the Rhine. Because of these somewhat similar long-held pedal chords in the prelude to Kátja it is thought by many that Janáček likewise intended to picture the flowing Volga but a Volga which affected the destiny of a number of humans.
After reaching a climax, a slower and softer section begins at [9] with No. 127 followed by this evocative phrase,
No. 128

a tender little episode on the Kátja theme (No. 127) which is soon overpowered at [10] by a combination of the wild sextuplet figure, the fiery trumpet motif and the timpani-trombone motif with edged colouring on the xylophone, which some call the "instrument of death"!

The Story and Music of Act 1, Scene I

When the curtain rises we see a valley, through which flows the Volga: the foreground is part of a public garden built on a high bank of the river. Kudrjáš, clerk to the wealthy merchant Dikoy, is sitting on a bench gazing at the river. "What a wonderful sight!" he exclaims to Gláša, an old servant in the Kabanová household who is walking in the garden. "Just think of it! I have been gazing at this beautiful river for years and years and I never weary of the sight!" Gláša is not impressed. Kudrjáš continues raving about the wonderful beauties of nature. Together they see Dikoy and his nephew, Boris, approaching. The merchant is waving his arms about and talking extravagantly to Boris. Not wishing to become involved in a family row, Kudrjáš moves away.
Since curtain rise the theme has been No. 128 and No. 128 extended and with greater emphasis.
Dikoy (which means "savage") is in a towering rage. He tells his nephew that he is a lazy good-for-nothing, always loafing around: chords in angry trills and this irascible motif:
No 129

Let him find something better to do than hang around him all the time!
Boris replies meekly that he is listening-what more can he do? "Go to the devil", shouts Dikoy furiously and, turning to Gláša, asks her if her mistress is at home. Gláša replies that Mme Kabanová (Kabanov means "a wild boar") is in the garden. With a scowl at his nephew, he spits viciously on the ground and goes off.
Kudrjáš approaches Boris and asks him why it is that when his uncle makes his life so miserable he should continue to live with him. Boris replies that the matter is really quite simple: when his parents died (sequence of despondent whole-tone chords) all their money and property was bequeathed to his sister and himself when they came of age but on one condition-that they should implicitly obey their uncle. If he had only himself to consider he would have thrown it up and left long ago. But he is sorry for his sister: his uncle wishes her to come here, but, so far, his mother's family have prevented her from coming. His life here is bad enough but it would be a terrible place for his sister. Kudrjáš agrees that the situation is difficult. The principal theme for Boris's story is this mild, nondescript figure:
No. 130

It is Sunday evening: several people pass by in the distance, probably returning from vespers. Janáček here gives some additional lines to Boris, lamenting his passing youth and deploring the unhappiness of his lot.
No 131

Fekluša, a pilgrim beggar-woman, enters and expresses quite different sentiments to Gláša. How lovely everything is! The merchants and their wives are all so good, so pious, so charitable, especially Mme Kabanová! Overhearing this last remark Kudrjáš says that although outwardly pious and charitable, Mme Kabanová is in fact a hypocrite, ruling with a rod of iron everyone unlucky enough to belong to her household. Boris is too full of his own troubles to pay much attention to this. He confides to his friend that he has fallen in love with a wonderful person... and a married woman at that! Why, here she comes walking with her husband and his mother! What a fool he is! His friend warns him of the danger of pursuing a love affair in that quarter. Boris, who, by the way, is the only person in the opera not dressed in Russian costume, hides behind the corner of the house so that, unseen, he may watch his beloved. (When he speaks of Kátja the orchestra has played No. 131 in a variety of ways: as she enters the theme reveals new qualities of beauty, simplicity and grandeur.)
From the other side enter Mme Kabanová, Tikhon -her son, Varvara-her daughter, and Kátja -her daughter-in-law. Boris runs off laughing bitterly. His mother reproaches Tikhon for having changed feelings for her since his marriage. It is clear that he prefers his wife to his mother and no longer loves or obeys her as he used to. She sees it in everything!
No 132

Tikhon's weak protests are brushed aside by this domineering woman.
Kátja says simply and gently to Mme Kabanová that she respects and honours her mother-in-law as though she were her own mother and she knows Tikhon loves her in the same way (the orchestra plays the sweet, gentle No. 127 from the overture). The mother angrily turns on her daughter-in-law telling her to speak when she is spoken to and not to interfere (repetition of the irritable No. 132 in a variation). It's bad enough to have her daunting her love for her husband in front of everyone-after all Tikhon is her son. Kátja asks her why she should so abuse her, what harm has she ever done her, while Varvara remarks in an aside that this is a fine time and place for another motherly sermon.
Tikhon assures his mother that his feelings have not changed towards her: he loves both his wife and his mother. But there is no stopping Mme Kabanová once she gets started: if he is soft with his wife how can he expect Kátja to respect him? Would he stand tamely by if she had a lover? "But what's the use of talking to a fool?" she says calmly and goes out.
Throughout this entire scene the Kátja theme is always No. 127, never No. 130, which in glowing orchestral colouring is first introduced here to us. It may be that Janáček would have us associate No. 130 with Boris and his dream of happiness and not with Kátja herself: certainly Boris is on the stage all the time No. 130 appears, gazing with longing eyes on the woman with whom he has fallen madly in love.
Tikhon remarks wearily to his sister that that is how it is-his mother is always nagging him about Kátja . Varvara tells him to show more spirit: not only does his mother pounce on Kátja but so does he. How can anyone help loving Kátja ? She is so lovely. Yet they all make her unhappy-so very unhappy.

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