Boris is envious of their happiness and wonders
what he can possibly say to Kátja . A moment
later Kátja herself comes slowly down the
path, her head covered with a large white
kerchief and her eyes on the ground. "Is
it you, Katarina Kabanová?" ventures
Boris timidly: "Ah, if you only knew
how I love you. "He tries to take her
hand but she is frightened and tells him not
to touch her. He surely knows that she is
a married woman, she says, and must honour
and love her husband till her death. Does
he want to ruin her?
"How could I wish to ruin you",
replies Boris passionately, "when I love
you more than anything on earth?" Since
she has come here in the night to meet him
secretly, Kátja confesses it proves that she
no longer has any will of her own and, in
a quick surrender, flings herself on his neck.
Boris fervently returns her embrace and for
a few moments these two lonely spirits find
inexpressible happiness and bliss in their
mutual love.
But Kátja is troubled; she has brought this
ruin on herself: she is guilty of a sin in
loving him and must suffer for it. Boris asks
her why she should think of that at a time
when they have just discovered the magic of
their love.
As Varvara and Kudrjáš re-enter, Kátja buries
her face bashfully on Boris's breast. Varvara
asks the trembling lovers if they have found
each other. "Of course", Boris replies.
Varvara suggests that they should stroll together
by the banks of the Volga.
Kudrjáš compliments Varvara in arranging things
so neatly: it should be easy enough now for
the lovers to meet here, but won't the old
lady find out? Varvara assures him that her
mother is a very heavy sleeper, and besides,
Gláša, the servant, is keeping watch. The
voices of a very different pair of lovers
is heard in the distance plighting their mutual
troth: "Forever I am yours. "
After a few moments Kudrjáš whistles and sings
in a loud voice: "Time to go home, time
to go home! ""You can't carry on
an affair without some danger", Varvara
remarks, yawning. Kudrjáš strikes up another
popular song:
It is night and far from
home
Maidens should no longer roam
Ei, Ieli, Ieli, Ieli,
Maidens should no longer roam.
Varvara leans
on his shoulder and sings a second stanza.
Kátja and Boris run in and the two young women
together go up the path. Boris looks longingly
after his beloved as the curtain falls.
Relation
of the Play to the Opera: Act II
After Mme Kabanová
has scolded Kátja for not giving a public
demonstration of her feelings on the departure
of her husband (which, as has been mentioned,
would have more point if it followed immediately
on Tikhon's leaving), Kátja, alone, meditates:
things would be so much easier for her if
she had children: better still, if she had
died when she was young and, as an angel,
flown over the fields from cornflower to cornflower
in the breeze like a butterfly. She can, however,
at least buy some linen and make it into clothes
to give to the poor. If she sits and sews
with Varvara the time will pass quickly until
her husband's return. All this confusion shows
that Kátja is fighting the temptation to give
expression to her love for Boris. Confused,
too, are her thoughts when the frivolous Varvara
leaves her in possession of the key of the
garden gate. An occasion has now presented
itself and one may take a headlong plunge,
meditates Kátja . It is easy to fall into sin!
But once done it may result in a whole lifetime
of torment.
The psychological conflicts in Kátja's mind
and character are expressed in masterly fashion
in the play: it is, indeed, this pre-Freudian
understanding and penetration into the innermost
secret depths of a human soul which makes
the play so great. In his musical portrayal
of Kátja, Janáček reduces words to a minimum
relying on the far greater and far more immediate
emotional power of music to fill in the gaps.
In the scene between the two tyrants, Mme
Kabanová is in complete command of the situation:
her sincere, if hypocritical, piety gives
her a sense of something like divine justice
for all her actions, however reprehensible,
however cruel, however wounding these actions
may be; but it is entirely different with
the rough, sly, uncouth, mean, drunken, bullying
merchant who, for all his toughness, occasionally
suffers from an uneasy conscience. Although
he is of her own class, Mme Kabanová can barely
conceal the contempt she feels for this blustering
weakling. The maudlinly sentimental catharsis
of Dikoy abasing himself before a humble peasant
reminds one of a similar humiliating incident
in the final scene of 'I he House of The Dead
when the irascible Major Eight-Eyes likewise
abases himself before Petrovič.
The following scene of the play is omitted
by Janáček: Boris enters and meets his friend
the elderly tradesman and "crank",
Kuligin, and together they stroll around the
boulevard. After a conventional greeting,
Kuligin launches into a revealing and revolutionary
speech of a type which one can well believe
highly incensed the Russian merchant class
against its author, in much the same way as
Bernard Shaw-half a century later-put into
the mouths of some of his characters his own
revolutionary ideas on capitalism, socialism,
religion and other highly controversial subjects
provoking similarly violent reactions from
those to whose advantage it was to hold contrary
views.
The town has built a boulevard, says Kuligin,
which the rich use only on holidays and then
only to display the latest fashion in their
clothes. The poor have no time to take walks
as they have to work night and day and are
lucky if they get three hours' sleep out of
twenty-four. But in any case, the rich won't
allow them to use the boulevard, particularly
at night: the doors are bolted, fierce dogs
are let loose-not against thieves but so that
people may not see how they abuse their households
and tyrannize their families. What depravity
and drunkenness flourish behind these locks!
"We know these family secrets!"
he says: "these secrets are pleasant
to the head of the house but he makes the
rest of his people howl like wolves. They
cheat orphans, relatives, nephews; bully the
household so that they dare not mention the
things he does there. Only young couples in
love ever steal an hour or two from sleep
to walk in the boulevard." At this point
in the play Kudrjáš and Varvara enter: Varvara,
with her face covered, tells Boris that if
he goes to the Kabanov's garden he will find
someone waiting for him.
In the fourth scene of his opera, Janáček
has substituted a Cossack dance for the rather
gruesome ballad of Ostrovsky, about a blood-thirsty
Cossack who wished to murder his wife. This
energetic though somewhat melancholy song
makes a welcome contrast to the grim, tense
surrounding scenes: likewise the deep, spiritual
love fraught with guilt and danger between
Boris and Kátja, is set against the ordinary
and rather shallow love affair between Varvara
and Kudrjáš, the care-free light-heartedness
of which is emphasized by the light folk-song
duettino Janáček gives them to sing.
Kudrjáš has more to say to Boris than Janáček
allows. "Get a girl of your own and go
walking with her and no one will have anything
to say. But don't meddle with another fellow's
wife: you know what kind of people these Kabanovs
are. They will eat Kátja alive, they will
nail her in a coffin. "But Boris is so
madly in love that he refuses to believe his
friend and when Kátja eventually arrives,
the love scene which follows-the first gasps
of delight of the distraught lovers leading
to a complete and passionate rapport between
them-has no parallel in modern drama outside
Maeterlinck's and Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande.
There is more talk of "sin" and
"abandonment" in the play when Kátja tells Boris that she has brought this on herself.
"If I am afraid of sin for your sake,
shall I fear the judgment of men? I have loved
you for a long time. From the very first time,
if you had beckoned to me I should have followed
you. If you had gone to the end of the earth
I should have come with you and never looked
back."
The
Music of Act II
SCENE 1
The act begins
with two complementary motifs, the flowing
No. 140 and the alert, enquiring No. 2 in
B flat minor, the home key of the opera.
No 140
No 141
They are both worked up, then quickly subside
as the curtain rises on the scene where the
mother-in-law chides her daughter-in-law (mainly
to a variant of 140) now made more expressive
with a sustained note (minim) at *, and sometimes
preceded with a longer lead up (three times
(A) to (B)). After Mme Kabanová leaves, Kátja's
resentment is expressed in a rhapsodized variation
of 141.
The mood entirely changes at Varvara's entrance
when a warm, kindly, relaxed "summery"
little 2/8 tune appears on violas, accompanied
lightly by syncopated celesta and flute chords
in 16/16
No 142
This theme perfectly
expresses Varvara's happy acceptance and care-free
approach to life and love. She loves her sister-in-law
without in the least understanding the complexities
of Kátja's character: she is the one member
of the Kabanov household unaffected by the
guilt-laden atmosphere of the house.
Variations of 141 and 140 are wonderfully
transformed to express Kátja's inner struggle
between fear and apprehension on the one hand,
and love and hope on the other, when she is
left alone with the key of the garden gate
(a key to happiness, to love's fulfilment-or
a key to sin and perdition?)
In notes of
double diminution No. 140 appears like a writhing
serpent tempting Kátja to her doom [5]: then
in a thick, ponderous adagio as a motif of
Fate which cannot be evaded [7]-1, etc. The
swing between the tension of the first and
fifth notes of No. 141 relaxing on the lower
notes, in intensified in variations and developments,
both as a single line against agitated tremolos
and duplicated in canon. Diminutions of the
whirling serpent-tempting No. 140 followed
by a fatalistic surrender to the inevitable
(ending in a relaxed E flat major chord-indicating
that love has triumphed over all other considerations)
conclude this psychological penetrating episode
of Act I.
The music for the incident between Mme Kabanová
and the cringing Dikoy is dominated by a theme
whose second half is only a slightly disguised
form of Mme Kabanová's motif of irritation
in Act I.
No 143
The first part indicates that Mme Kabanová
is in a more expansive and genial mood than
usual, probably because she is being consulted
by a neighbour of equal social status to herself.
A development of (C) of No. 143 accompanies
Dikoy's confession, after which the diatonic
genial (A) of (143) gains prominence.
SCENE 2
This begins
with the gloomy No. 144 with its undercurrent
of restlessness, miraculously transformed
into a serene love motif at No. 144A
No. 144 No. 144A
After repetitions, the orchestra softly plays
the first stanza of Kudrjáš's Cossack dance
as he enters in search of Varvara.
No. 145
His impatience at not finding her is reflected
in a forte sequence of A, No. 144.
Kudrjáš's song is about a wealthy suitor rejected
for a humbler but more acceptable rival. He
strums an accompaniment on his balalaika.
It is a measured (1-2, 1-2) smooth, conjunct
tune with a steady patterned accompaniment
and something of the melancholy of the Russian
steppes about it, only becoming really animated
in the climax of the song. A of (145) punctuates
his "still not here? What's keeping her?
"-between the verses and continues in
a slower diatonic variation when Kudrjáš questions
Boris: the enigmatic No. 144 accompanies Boris's
reply.
There are four unexpected tranquil bars of
a C major chord (wind and horn) as Boris satisfies
himself that this is indeed the place where
he is to meet his beloved. As Kudrjáš warns
his friend that no good can come of this affair,
No. 144 is worked in canon. A gently impatient
viola tune in waltz rhythm appears when Boris
recounts his first meeting with Kátja
No 146
doubled in intensity, later, as he awaits
tremulously the first intimate meeting with
the woman be loves so passionately.
Varvara comes through the garden singing the
words of a lilting, staccato love song to
No. 142: the orchestra joins in at the fifth
bar doubling the tune and with the gossamer
light alternating two-chord accompaniment
in gentle syncopation on flutes and celesta.
Kudrjáš replies with the gopak-like stamping
sforzando Cossack dance figure:
No 147
The second verse follows on similar lines
after which the sweeping No. 146 falls and
rises with Boris's growing impatience.
The first approach of the timid and trembling
lovers is beautifully and truthfully expressed
with No. 144 (adagio), preceded and followed
by eloquent pauses as the lovers gaze at one
another in blissful contemplation. This motif
now harmonized and accelerated is repeated
many times in rising sequences building up
to a passionate climax.
The tender love motif No. 144A sings out ardently:
new, restless, love-charged motifs appear
(including a four-note ostinato figure-with
the last note tied)-like the wildly beating
hearts of the lovers.
At a big climax Kátja confesses
No. 148
"In my heart I know only your will! You
must surely see! "During the first rapturous
embrace of the lovers we hear another new
love motif
No 149
above a quietly throbbing quaver accompaniment.
The two phrases (marked *) beginning after
the strong beats seem to indicate an inward
restlessness-a subconscious fear-in the breasts
of the lovers, particularly when the motif
is reiterated more than twenty times above
continually changing harmonies.
It gives way to a pleasant light arpeggio
figure as Varvara enters, and asks if all
is right between Boris and Kátja . Her conversation
with Kudrjáš is a chattering recitative above
a variation of No. 142; sustained low notes
in the bass suggest snores and slumber; the
voices of the newly found lovers are heard
in passionate confession "Forever I am
yours!"
No. 150
Kudrjáš and Varvara
like nothing better than to sing songs and
it has to be admitted that these light strophic
quasi-Russian folk-songs of theirs provide
just the right note of open sociability to
throw into relief the tragic overtones of
the dangerous love affair between Boris and
Katya. Kudrjáš's warning to the lovers that
it is time to break up and go home is sung
as a line from a popular song (a variant of
147) after which he and his lady-love oblige
with another light-hearted ditty.
As Boris and Kátja rush in in a state bordering
on alarm, the music panics accordingly, stabilizing
in a passionate tutti maestoso motif which
we can trace to (B) of 149 and to (A) of 150
and probably elsewhere. The stage is empty.
Bassoon and cello play a forlorn arpeggio
figure and the act concludes with a soft chromatic
figure shifting between E major and E minor
but finally resting on a blissful warm E major
chord.
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