Jenůfa

I went to see Jenůfa at the University Opera Theatre last night. We started out with sushi and sake at one of my favorite restaurants in Uptown, Fuji Ya. I sprang for grilled salmon skin and spicy tuna rolls. Very delish.






























I've heard a lot about Leoš Janáček and this opera in particular (it's the one that finally put him on the proverbial map...at age 62) but I've never heard any of his music. It's quite a striking piece what with its infanticide, facial mutilation and--you guessed it--love. Can't have an opera without a twisted love triangle or some other sort of romantic intrigue.

In my humble opinion, the strange thing about this work (other than the fact that all the main characters are tenors and sopranos) is that its title character seems to have little to do with the actual forward motion of the plot. Jenůfa is the pivot point for the other main characters' transformation into better people and, aside from all sorts of bad stuff that happens to her (unplanned pregnancy, disfigurement, the murder of her baby by her stepmother...I mean give a girl a break), she doesn't necessarily change all that much by the end. That being said, it's also quite possible that she could be the one that changes the most by the end of the opera and, depending on how you look at it, her ultimate forgiveness of her step mother could be the point of the entire proceedings. Who knows.

It was spectacularly performed and the fact that these were students from the University of Minnesota was hard to tell. The lead sopranos (Jenůfa and Kostelnička) and the tenor who played Laca were particularly fantastic.