Jenufa and Favourite Plots in Classical Music

Last night I went to see the Opera Australia production of Leoš Janáček's opera Jenufa (or rather, Jenůfa, with what I now know is called a "kroužek" - in Czech, it makes it a long "u".) Anyway, I loved the opera - I thought it the music was wonderful and the plot was moving and believable. I put it on my list of Favourite Plots in Classical Music - a list which includes Der fliegende Holländer and Verklärte Nacht.

Verklärte Nacht is a string sextet by Schoenberg (yes, the crazy atonal Schoenberg back in the days when he wrote using tradtional keys) based on a poem by Richard Dehmel. It premiered around the same time as Jenůfa - in 1902, as opposed to 1904. Verklärte Nacht (it means "Transfigured Night", by the way) tells the story of a man and a woman walking through a wood on a cold, dark night. She says to him, "I'm carrying a child, but it's not yours." He says to her, "Look, it doesn't matter. Our love will transfigure the child, so it will be as if it were mine." And they walk onwards through the high, bright night. It's pretty and heart-warming :)

Two people are walking through a bare, cold wood;
the moon keeps pace with them and draws their gaze.
The moon moves along above tall oak trees,
there is no wisp of cloud to obscure the radiance
to which the black, jagged tips reach up.
A woman's voice speaks:

"I am carrying a child, and not by you.
I am walking here with you in a state of sin.
I have offended grievously against myself.
I despaired of happiness,
and yet I still felt a grievous longing
for life's fullness, for a mother's joys
and duties; and so I sinned,
and so I yielded, shuddering, my sex
to the embrace of a stranger,
and even thought myself blessed.
Now life has taken it's revenge,
and I have met you, met you."

She walks on, stumbling.
She looks up; the moon keeps pace.
Her dark gaze drowns in light.
A man's voice speaks:

"Do not let the child you have conceived
be a burden on your soul.
Look, how brightly the universe shines!
Splendour falls on everything around,
you are voyaging with me on a cold sea,
but there is the glow of an inner warmth
from you in me, from me in you.
That warmth will transfigure the stranger's child,
and you will bear it me, begot by me.
You have transfused me with splendour,
you have made a child of me."

He puts an arm about her strong hips.
Their breath embraces in the air.
Two people walk on through the high, bright night.
(Translation: Mary Whittall)

Interestingly, I can see a number of parallels in plot between this work and Jenůfa, mostly because they both tell the story of women who have had other lovers, and children to those lovers, and yet the men they end up with deal with that and move on.

If these were Hollywood movies, there'd be bitching about betrayal and "how could you do this to me" and all that rubbish. Here, however, both Dehmel's Anonymous-Man and Janacek's Laca may mind just a little bit (who wouldn't) - but they accept that everyone makes mistakes sometimes, they get do over it, and they do move on. That way everyone lives happily ever after.

And it is heart-warming!