Jenufa

For the first time in the U. S., Jenufa, opera by Leos Janacek, Czecho-Slovakian composer, was given at the Metropolitan. Grand were the persons of the cast; gorgeous the scenery; the music clever, racy, innocent of melody. In the title role was yellow-haired Maria Jeritza; Mmes. Margaret Matzenauer and Kathleen Howard and Messrs. Rudolf Laubenthal and Martin Ohman supported her. A grand house applauded. Critics commended. Plot. In a Moravian village lived Jenufa, the prettiest girl in the countryside, in whose grey glance lodged witchery. She was loved by Stewa, village stew, and by his brother Laca, an honorable gaffer, who deplored the low-lived ways of Stewa. Without virtue himself, Stewa appropriates Jenufa's. Months go by. She gives birth to a difficulty. Jenufa's stepmother pleads with Stewa. Will he not make Jenufa an Honest Woman? No, he will not, for Laca, in scorn and spite, has slashed Jenufa's cheek with a knife that her beauty may be blemished and his brother find her fair no longer. Stew Stewa falls in love with another lady. Laca calls on the stepmother. He would marry the girl himself, he says, but damme, he cannot stomach the child. Whereupon the stepmother, on a black winter's night, drugs Jenufa, steals out hugger-mugger into the dark and drowns the bastard in an icy brook. On the day of the marriage feast, the ice thaws, peasants discover a disfigured bundle in the sedge. Step-mother is led off to jail, but iron bars make no cage for her. Her daughter is an Honest Woman.

Composer. Leos Janacek composed this opera in 1901. It was first performed in Bruenn in 1904; received its first recognition when it was produced in Prague in 1916. Janacek, now a celebrity, abhors saccharine melody in opera. "

Madame Jeritza, in the title role, a picture of fresh, rustic loveliness, acted and sang with never-failing variety and vitality" (The New York World). According to The New York Times, her Jenufa is "undoubtedly one of her finest accomplishments." Janacek, the composer, and Jeritza are compatriots. Jeritza was born and brought up in Bruenn, the little town in Czecho-Slovakia where Janacek has spent the greater part of his life. She made her operatic debut in Olmuetz, from there she went to the Vienna Volksopcr (People's Opera) and thence to the Hofoper (Imperial Court Opera). She would have come to the U. S. in 1914, but the War intervened and her Metropolitan debut was postponed to 1921. Out of a potential repertoire of some fifty-odd roles--including German, French and Italian operas--she has appeared in ten at the Metropolitan. She is especially lauded for her Elisabeth in Tannhaueser, Elsa in Lohengrin, Tosca in Tosco. Jenufa is now added to the list.