Osud (Fate)

JANÁČEK'S FOURTH OPERA

If untidiness of manuscript handwriting is an accredited attribute of genius, then Janáček must stand alongside no less a composer than Ludwig van Beethoven. I examined several of the original Janáček scores at the Brno Museum and found them to be all but unintelligible.

Janáček frequently drew the stave lines himself with a free-hand, despising printed staves which he said "in their emptiness, tempt me to fill them with a quite unnecessary number of notes ". Rubber erasers would appear to have been an unknown commodity in Czechoslovakia in the first quarter of this century, and razor blades and knives with keen edges a rarity (except for taking the bloom off an occasional maiden’s rosy cheek!).

Janáček’s frequent corrections and alterations of his original ideas are all piled one on top of the other, so that often a page of his manuscript looks far more like an abstract pen-and-ink drawing than a page of music!

He had a habit, too, of composing some of his operas in "bits"; setting a few lines of the libretto here and a few lines there, making several alternative settings and joining up all the "bits" afterwards. Czechoslovakian musicologists are not looking forward to the year 1978 when, with the Viennese copyright of the big Janáček works expired, they will have to face up to the Herculean task of deciding which of the many existing versions should be incorporated in a definitive edition of his works. I was told that in the case of the opera Fate, there is almost enough music "left over" to make another opera!

Fate

Osud is by far the most controversial of the Janáček operas: following the highly successful Jenůfa and composed as long ago as 1906, it yet failed to attract any opera promoter in Czechoslovakia or elsewhere, and only received a first performance at the Brno Janáček Festival in October 1958.

I hope readers will forgive me for again quoting some notes which I wrote in my diary at the time:

Janáček wrote some top-line music for his fourth opera, Osud. I attended a couple of rehearsals before the première on October 25th, so got to know the music fairly well The first act has in it some really dramatic music; the garden scene is full of gay, lilting rhythms and tunes; the whole opera is near-vintage Janáček.

Some London critics appear to find influences of Puccini, Dvořák and Tchaikovsky: in my opinion, the influence of other composers is negligible and need not disturb us.

The plot, however, is so feeble as to preclude any possible success for the work in its present form. Here is a rough synopsis of the story:

A composer loves a girl who has borne him a child. They would marry, but the girl’s mother considers her daughter better off as an unmarried mother than as the wife of a penniless musician. The opening act is set in a fashionable park: teenagers romp and dance, elegant ladies and gentlemen promenade. The composer and his girl-friend meet again by chance, and after doing a spot of Tristan and Isolde staring at one another, have two long discussions, after which they finally decide to risk marriage, in spite of Mamma’s objections. Mamma, herself, puts in a short appearance with fox stole, laced boots and other faded Victorian trimmings, slouching about the stage with melodramatic, half-crazed looks from beneath her heavily mascara’d eyelids.

Act II. We see the composer composing, the wife knitting, the child reading. Enter Mamma, tearing her hair; pushes daughter over balcony and jumps over herself.

Act III. The composer, now grown sufficiently senile to be a professor and principal of a music academy, tells his students about the opera he has just written on the sad, sad story of his life. A sudden flash of lightning-the composer falls dead-fried! Curtain.

The day after the Brno première, the Stuttgart Opera House gave Janáček’s music adapted to a somewhat different story. After viewing both productions, Janáček experts will meet to discuss which version, if either, should be published.

Operas have been known to succeed in holding an honourable place in the repertoire despite the weakness of their story, the most obvious example being, of course, Verdi’s Il Trovatore. We know that Janáček got hold of a garbled version of a partly true story, which had already been used for the basis of a one-act opera by Vitezslav Čelanský, performed in Prague, 1897. A certain Kamila (a name which somehow keeps popping up in Janáček archives!) double-crosses a certain Viktor (a poet), for she equally accepts the advances of a certain young lieutenant. When Viktor discovers the deception, he denounces and renounces Kamila for ever.

Janáček engaged the services of a 20-year-old schoolteacher and friend of his daughter Olga, one Fedora Bartošekova, to write the libretto for him as a kind of continuation of this flimsy story, giving her the most minute instructions how the job was to be done: it had to be in verse, similar to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which, incidentally-both play and opera considerably influenced the Janáček work: the meeting by chance of the lovers in the park is paralleled in Tatiana’s meeting with Onegin at the ball in St. Petersburg; Osud originally contained a letter scene, etc.

Janáček’s enthusiasm for the subject of his new opera appeared to know no bounds: without even giving his librettist a clear-cut picture of the entire story, he sent her odd bits of the libretto which he himself had written, asking the dazed Miss Bartošekova to put them into verse and send them back by return post; which, when she did so, he immediately set to music.

The performance of Osud which I witnessed in 1958 was that edited by Václav Nosek: the Stuttgart production which followed a day later was a musical and textual rearrangement by Kurt Honolka. It is now time to give a less frivolous account of the story of the opera, as set to music by Leos Janáček.

Here is the story as first outlined by the composer: "A wealthy young woman and a poor young composer fall in love with one another. But fate will not allow them to marry; instead the girl marries a wealthy farmer. The sadly disillusioned composer writes an opera exposing the falseness and shallowness of the woman he loved: later her husband deserts her. The couple meet again by chance in a certain spa and become lovers again." Dr. Theodora Straková, who has made a special study of this opera, gives a fuller synopsis of the dramatic material as it was later laid out by the composer for a three-act opera, a synopsis which, incidentally, differs considerably from that finally accepted by Janáček. This version was largely autobiographical: one easily identifies Živný, the hero of the opera, with Janáček himself, for, writes Dr. Straková, he makes statements about art and his method of composition which are Janáček’s own, he writes music which, while being highly individual, makes little appeal to the general public, his opera is rejected by the theatre manager; he becomes director of a musical academy, and even mourns the loss of a beloved daughter-experiences bitter and factual which Janáček himself underwent. One notes, too, that the definitive story of the opera as told in Vogel’s book is by no means identical with that given in Straková’s essay- "The problem of Janáček’s opera, Osud". As the vocal score of the opera has not yet been published, it is somewhat difficult to set forth a clear-cut account of the libretto, which underwent many changes in the process of construction and is by no means a straightforward story.

ACT I

It is a bright sunny morning: people are gaily promenading in a park at the Spa of Luhačovice as the orchestra plays a lilting waltz. Janáček introduces a number of different characters whom he saw and met at the Spa when he visited it in 1903. The following motif is prominent in the orchestra:

No. 234

The chorus sing a hymn to the sun of which Jan Kunc wrote: "Janáček successfully portrayed in music, nature painting which Antonin Slavíček had equally successfully captured on canvas-the feeling of blinding light and scorching sun drenching the promenade of a small country spa." A very beautiful and much-sought-after young woman, Míla, appears and is presented with a bouquet of roses by one of her admirers, the painter Lhotsky. Suddenly and unexpectedly, she sees among the crowd the composer Živný, who once was her lover and by whom she had a child. The following somewhat poignant and nostalgic melody expresses the emotions of the lovers at their unexpected meeting:

No. 235

Živný tells Míla of the loneliness of his life since she left him and of the difficulties he is experiencing in his own creative work, which lacks inspiration and direction. Míla is touched by his sincerity and her own deep feelings for her former lover return. She asks him if he has come to claim their son and agrees to allow him custody of the child: they arrive at a reconciliation.

This dramatic scene is followed by a more lyrical episode in which Janáček limits his orchestra to a piano and wind instruments.

Among the promenading crowd are groups of teenage girls and students. Miss Prim (Stuhlá), the schoolmistress, reminds her youthful charges that it is time for them to attend a rehearsal. Another group makes preparations for a picnic.

An odd character, a certain Dr. Viktor Suda, enters flourishing a huge umbrella around which some of the gay young ladies tie brightly coloured ribbons of red, white and blue, the traditional Slavonic colours.

Two of the teachers as soloists and the students as choir in imitation, perform a rather serious choral number accompanied by a piano.

Dr. Suda tops this with a somewhat frivolous little song (again in praise of the sun and based on the previous sun motif, with something of the character of a Russian folksong about it):

No. 236

The painter Lhotsky joins in the fun, exhorting them all to eat, drink and be merry, and to the sound of bagpipe and fiddle the company make a breezy and noisy exit.

In a few moments, Míla and Živný return from their stroll and resume their conversation. We now learn something of their past intimacies: how, after seeing the composer conduct a performance of one of his operas, Míla was so stricken with a bout of hero-worship that she enthusiastically jumped into his bed-later visiting an aunt in the country to have her baby.

In a monologue somewhat reminiscent of the atmosphere of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Živný confesses that he still loves Míla, while she in her turn declares that she has never ceased to love him and that it was her mother who came between them and attempted to force her into marrying a rich suitor. Míla’s lyrically intense narrative is one of the most moving and beautiful parts of the opera: "I want to be scorched by sunshine: I want the sun to burn up my sadness", she declares passionately as the orchestra plays the motif of "Fate" which is prominent throughout the opera:

No. 237

Dr. Straková has pointed out the parallelism between Jenůfa and Míla, both being unmarried mothers and both victims of interference from loving but misguided and unrealistic mothers.

The lovers have agreed to marry: Míla only fears how her decision will be accepted by her mother. The scene is dominated by the "Fate" motif, supported by its characteristic ostinato rhythmical accompaniment.

A quarter of an hour after saluting the rising sun and going off on an early morning spree, the picnickers now return lovingly in pairs, as night begins to fall! Dr. Suda suggests they should go to a nearby hotel and round off the evening with a dance: there is merriment and some kissing.

In the preceding crowd scene we may have caught a glimpse of a tragic-looking woman, moaning moodily around: this is the mother of Míla who now re-enters. When she is told that her daughter has been seen in the company of the composer Živný and appears to be reconciled with him, she is very much upset. "This can only lead to disaster", she exclaims dramatically, as the curtain falls.

The following themes from Act I give further evidence of the high quality of Janáček’s music:

No. 238

No. 239

No. 240

ACT II

The orchestral prelude with its chamber music scoring introduces a quiet, pensive motif:

No. 241

suggesting the intimate family scene in front of a warm fire, which we are about to view.

Between the acts, two important events have occurred:

1. Živný and Míla have married.

2. Unable to bear the thought of Živný making an honest woman out of her daughter, the old woman has gone mad; or, to speak more charitably, as the grandes dames in Stendhal’s Verrières might have behaved if one of their daughters had married the stable-boy. The shock of her daughter marrying a penniless low born composer, in preference to the wealthy suitor the mother herself had chosen for her daughter, so preyed on her mind as to affect its balance. During the period of his bitter bachelor-hood, Živný had written the first two acts of an autobiographical opera and when the curtain rises he and his wife are seen paging through its score. Živný’s opera is the one referred to by Janáček "expressing the falseness and baseness of the woman he loved".

"I wished to wrench your heart from its breast and show to the whole world its fraud, its falsehood, its rottenness", declares Živný, "but I see now that I deceived myself, that I let my mad passions and jealousy overrule me. It is all lies, lies, lies that I have written!" and the remorseful composer furiously tears up this particular section of his opera.

Živný’s monologue is based on motifs and their variations having an underlying tenseness not met with in the first act. The "Fate" motif-No. 237, sometimes varied-is also present and with its usual ostinato accompaniment.

Míla says that she too was guilty, presumably of not running away with her lover in the first instance.

A dark shadow is cast across the mutual confessions and new understanding of the lovers by the mad mother, off-stage, interjecting: she is obsessed by the terrible sin once committed by her daughter. Her voice continues as a sinister counterpoint in an echo-like duet as Živný reads telling excerpts from letters which have passed between him and Míla during their time of trial. Here Janáček reduces the orchestra to a piano quasi-extemporization accompaniment.

In an expressive and revealing monologue, Živný chastises himself still further for having caused Míla needless suffering and for being so uncharitable as to believe the rumour that she had betrayed him: he has at least musically atoned for this by destroying the portion of his opera which centred round these unpleasant and now proved false and untruthful incidents. (Further development of motifs which may be classified as a "Živný family" group of themes.) All this time their young son Doubek-recently legitimized-has been sitting quietly reading a book.

He now turns to his mother and asks her naively: "Mother, do you know what love is?"

No. 242

to which she guardedly, but with real feeling, replies: "It is when Jack and Jill love one another." Míla’s mother now enters and at once angrily attacks Živný as the seducer of her daughter: the Fate motif which has persisted in the orchestra is now taken up by the voice (the mother).

No. 243

The distraught woman works herself up to a wild, uncontrolled frenzy and passion, accusing Živný of marrying Míla for her money (if a phrase like "wanting to rob me of my gold" can be so interpreted). She keeps screaming "Osud" (Fate); finally, clutching hold of her daughter she pushes Míla through the balcony window and jumps after her to her death.

The little boy cries pitifully: Živný pathetically calls on Heaven to strike him down with lightning and put an end to his sorrow.

The music builds up to a dramatic climax in which No. 235 reappears and the Fate motif-sometimes in augmentation-dominates.

ACT III

The orchestral introduction to the third act describes a storm and has something in common with the opening scene of Smetana’s opera Viola (based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night) of which the composer left only some fragments. (* Miss Margaret Cox remarks that when Smetana tried to write Viola he had become quite insane, and that Dr. Chisholm’s comparison is unfortunate.-Ed.)

Janáček’s storm music is based on this subtly chromatic two-bar motif:

No. 244

which goes over from orchestra to an off-stage male-voice choir in an unusual and highly original piece of music. Accompanied canonically by trombone, tuba and bass, the storm motif is sung by a solo tenor, gradually being taken up by different orchestral instruments: when the climax is reached, the Fate motif reappears in a new rhythmical and melodic variation.

The last act is set in the hall of the College of Music of which Živný is now Principal. Some years have elapsed since the tragic death of his wife and the suicide of her mother. A group of students are excitedly discussing the forthcoming première of their professor’s new opera. One of these students, Verva, asks the others if they know what important people are likely to attend the opening performance (mainly organ and harp accompaniment). Verva has a score of the opera and plays an excerpt from it-the children’s scene in Act II.

Živný himself arrives and in answer to questions from some of his students, he explains to them the story of his opera, adding that he has written only the first two acts- "the last act is in the hands of God, where it must remain!"

No. 245

Although the hero /composer of the opera is called Lensky, the students fully understand that the opera is really about their own professor: the audience knows, too, all about the tragic misunderstanding between Živný and Míla (from Míla’s "aria" in Act I); and as Živný continues the story we have witnessed in Osud Act II (with sympathetic comments from the students), he gradually loses himself in an ecstatic vision, dropping all pretence that the story is not that of his own life history.

No. 246

When he recalls the beauty, charm and sweetness of Míla, Doubek, the child of their love, pathetically cries out for his mother. During Živný’s narrative sequence, the storm which commenced in the orchestral interlude gradually becomes increasingly severe. There is a blinding flash of lightning in which a vision of Míla appears for a moment: "That is her cry! Can you not hear it?", cries the distraught composer as he falls to the ground struck by lightning.

"Or rather it is music for the last act of your opera", the bright pupil Verva exclaims hopefully. Some students run off to fetch a doctor as Živný staggers shakily to his feet: "Music for the last act?", he exclaims with great intensity, "No! That is in the hands of God and there it must remain! " Leaning heavily on his son and supported by students, Živný staggers out, bruised but unbroken.

Dr. Straková believes that a descending passage in the orchestra indicates the death of Živný struck by the thunderbolt, but that Janáček in a revision of the libretto changed his mind about killing off his hero.

The Fate motif and in variations such as the following:

No. 247

plays a large part in Act III.

Osud is important in the development of Janáček’s individual compositional technique, for here the constant variation and metamorphosis of motifs is thoroughly mature for the first time. The opera is in a sense monothematic: the Fate motif and its many derivatives dominates all three acts, unifying the three contrasting themes of: the sun-Act I, the home-Act II, the storm-Act III.

Janáček’s admiration for the story and the libretto of Osud has already been commented on and must be accepted as his sincere conviction: certainly he wrote a magnificent score to what every writer on Osud agrees is a singularly unmotivated and painfully weak story.

In his enthusiasm, Janáček could write that "the main characters are all clearly defined and the episodes are blended in happily: the verse flows along fresh and melodious".

Yet in spite of this and similar laudatory statements, he must at times have had inner reservations about the literary and narrative merits of his work: thus, when offering the opera to the Vinohradske Theatre (The theatre in Vinohradske, a district of Prague) for production he suddenly panicked, writing to his great friend Artus Rektorys, that he was afraid of the severity of the Director, Subert’s, criticism, and asking Rektorys to stress particularly the fact that the story of the opera was actually true, a somewhat negative argument in its favour.

No. 248

Again we find him in September 1907 asking the author, Dr. František Skacelik, to rewrite the libretto: and a decade later he begged the poet, Jaroslav Kvapil, to undertake a similar task for him. Finally, when Kvapil and even that most slavish of all his admirers, Max Brod, turned down the offer he accepted the unlucky "osud" of Osud and stopped trying to sell the opera to anyone.

The Stuttgart version of the story by Honolka puts on the stage a wealthy suitor to whom Míla’s mad mother marries off her daughter. This at least provides a motif for Živný’s jealousy and subsequent conduct and brings wealth, poverty and love into a conventional conflict. Although Honolka restores the mother to sanity in the last act (which is a good point) he unfortunately omits the main motif of the story which is the self-revealing opera of Živný motivated by his belief in Míla’s unfaithfulness and desertion of him, with the knowledge that later when he is told the truth he has been unjust to her, which feeling of remorse is the reason why he cannot finish his opera. And -all things considered-possibly a good thing, too!

Subjects of Operas on which Janáček Might Have Composed

If Giacomo Puccini had lived as long as Emilia Marty and he had written operas on all the librettos and stories he contemplated doing during his lifetime, he would have been the composer not of a mere dozen or so operas, but have had at least seventy-five to his credit.

Among likely and unlikely subjects considered by Puccini were Hugo’s Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame and Les Miserables, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Henry IV and Henry V, Lord Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii, Blackmore’s Lorna Doone, and Buddha, Benvenuto Cellini, Oliver Twist, Rip van Winkle, La Glui, The Arabian Nights, Trilby and William Tell.

We know that Debussy wrote sketches for King Lear and also considered As You Like It, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Devil in the Belfry and Tristram and Yseult as possible subjects for operas.

Janáček, too, had his dreams, although the subjects he considered, apart from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and The Living Corpse (both, by the way, down on Puccini’s list), are not likely to mean much to non-Czech readers.

Before settling on "Mr. Brouček", he had toyed with a number of subjects, including another Moravian-Slovak drama The Farmer’s Wench and a one-act play Spring Song, both by Gabriela Preissová, the librettist who had served him so well in Jenůfa. A year later, in 1905, he visited the village of Blatnice to note down various melodies he heard at a fair there, with the intention of composing a national fairy-tale opera "Johnny, the Hero", on a text by Dostal Lutinov. Other plays he considered at this period were an Easter mystery play The Soul of the Bells, an historical play The Mint-master’s Wife, and a national costume folk-drama Marysa.

A rival subject to Ostrovsky’s The Storm was a tragic idyll, The Forester’s Wife, much as Šalda’s the Child was an alternative to Karel Čapek’s Utopian comedy, The Makropulos Case.

One of the last jobs he did ("They want me now to try a comic opera!"), was to make musical sketches for Gerhard Hauptmann’s Schluck und Jau-a six-act play which is a kind of cross between Holberg’s Jeppe of the Hill and the opening of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

Other subjects offered him by various optimistic authors included "Judas ", "The Lost Head", "The Witch", "Body and Soul", "Castle in Bohemia", "The Cloak with the Golden Stars", "The Haunted Mansion", and "A Grandfather against his will".

The final reckoning-seven major operas (if we can somehow squeeze in Osud) and two trial efforts-is surely enough for one man’s contribution to operatic literature, and more than enough for a realistic share of the world operatic repertoire.

If out of seven, only Jenůfa and Kátja  Kabanová have really crossed the national frontiers of Czechoslovakia to any purpose, that is surely because these two operas belong to the emotional, romantic, realistic school which makes a wide international public appeal, and not because the music of the other five operas is inferior. The Felsenstein production of Sharp-Ears (the Czech equivalent of Hansel and Gretel) raised immediate and widespread interest in this enchanting nature opera: after having seen this delightful production, nothing would surprise me less than Felsenstein-or someone in his class-turning the Adventures of Mr. Brouček into a similar success: the basic comedy in words and music is there for the taking.

The House of the Dead, exciting but static, and The Makropulos Case, moving but wordy, have had outside successes in the last few years: the inherent sterling quality of the music of both operas is undeniable.

Osud, I fear, will need the miracle of a new libretto to be performable other than as a pious tribute to a musical genius, who somehow on this occasion got himself confused and went astray.

Finally, I conclude my tribute to the musical genius of Leos Janáček with the words of Browning used by Rosa Newmarch thirty years ago as a peroration to her comprehensive survey of Czechoslovakian music:

‘THAT WAS MUSIC! GOOD ALIKE AT GRAVE AND GAY!'

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