Leoš Janáček
Jenůfa
Nov 16 – Dec 4
Price includes $10.00 fee
After delivering one of the most stunning productions in recent Met memory with his 2025 take on Strauss’s Salome, director Claus Guth returns with a psychologically probing setting of Janáček’s haunting Jenůfa, extolled by The Telegraph at its London premiere as an “edgy, evocative staging that will surely become a classic.” Headlining the new staging is soprano Asmik Grigorian, whose dramatic intensity and powerhouse voice are perfectly suited to the demands of the title character, a young woman driven to despair by abandonment and betrayal. Legendary soprano Nina Stemme returns to the Met as the Kostelnička, Jenůfa’s stern stepmother, who commits an unspeakable act in a misguided attempt to save Jenůfa from ruin. Tenor Sean Panikkar and Ryan Capozzo also star as the impulsive Laca, who disfigures Jenůfa in a fit of jealousy, and his stepbrother Števa, who fathers her child before cruelly abandoning her. Maestro Tomáš Hanus makes his company debut on the podium.
Jenůfa is produced in association with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden
World premiere: Brno Theater, Brno, 1904. Among opera’s most psychologically astute dramas, Jenůfa presents a believable world in which no one is entirely good or bad and in which spiritual growth comes from the hard lessons of real life. The story centers on two women in a village in Moravia (now in the Czech Republic): Jenůfa and her stepmother, the Kostelnička (a term describing her office as the sacristan of the local church). Rich in human insight expressed in passionate, emotionally honest music, Jenůfa has come to be regarded as one of the greatest operas of the 20th century.
Creators
Born in rural Moravia, Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) studied in Brno and Prague and made a living as a teacher, organist, and choir director. Jenůfa brought him fame late in life, leading to the most fertile period of his career, with other operas such as Káťa Kabanová and The Makropulos Case. Janáček based the libretto for Jenůfa on the successful Czech play Její Pastorkyňa (Her Stepdaughter) by Gabriela Preissová (1862–1946).
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composer
Leoš Janáček
Production
Claus Guth
SET DESIGNER
Michael Levine
COSTUME DESIGNER
Gesine Völlm
LIGHTING DESIGNER
James Farncombe
Projection Design
rocafilm/ Roland Horvath
CHOREOGRAPHER
Teresa Rotemberg
Dramaturg
Yvonne Gebauer
C. Graham Berwind, III Chorus Director
Tilman Michael
Setting
Jenůfa takes place in a remote Moravian village in the last decades of the 19th century. Janáček’s focus on common people with real problems connects his work conceptually to what Puccini, Mascagni, and others were doing in the verismo operas of Italy at roughly the same time.
Music
The score features one of opera’s most evocative uses of the orchestra. It is the sung music, however, that makes Jenůfa indelible. Because the vocal writing is so closely related to the Czech language, even audiences who don’t understand Czech can appreciate the acoustical resonance of the original setting. Among the notable vocal highlights are the Kostelnička’s Act II monologue, tracing her mental gyrations with both drama and subtlety, and Jenůfa’s final narrative, in which the music takes the audience through the transformative process of forgiveness as words alone never could.
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