JANACEK QUESTIONS, MISPRINTS, VARIANTS

It is not unusual to find discrepancies between the piano-vocal score of an opera and its full-orchestral score. There is even a greater chance of finding misprints or variants if a particular opera has been printed in editions by more than one publisher. This gets even more complicated when an opera has not only been revised several times by the composer, re-orchestrated and cut by another composer, and then published in two different countries.

Thus for Leos Janacek’s opera Jenufa (Jeji pastorkyna), I have already examined at least 12 completely different published editions and 7 sources autographed by Janacek or his copyists. This is a total of 19 copies of one opera, none of which is in complete agreement with any other! IS THIS PERHAPS A RECORD FOR THE LARGEST NUMBER OF DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF ANY ONE OPERA ?1?1? It is even normal that the four leading singers will show up at the same rehearsal with four different editions (not to mention possibly seven more editions for the other secondary roles!)
I have previously helped Universal Edition with corrections to the UE2000 vocal-score of Jenufa (corrected edition published in 2003), and I am still working on the many corrections to the 1996 full-score (Brno 1908 version) including corrections to the orchestral parts. I have been studying this particular opera since 1993, and I am constantly surprised at how every time I open the score I find some new curious detail, which is often a misprint or occasionally even just one of Janacek’s idiosyncrasies which previous conductors or editors have tacitly changed.

Every conductor looks at the music in a slightly different way, and therefore I am thankful to those of you who have helped me by pointing out questionable spots which you have already found. Before creating this blog, some of the conductors who have helped me with their advice and/or questions about Janacek operas have included Sir Simon Rattle, Arthur Fagen, Mark Stringer, and those with whom I have worked as assistant conductor including Bohumil Gregor, Jiri Belohlavek, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and Leon Botstein. Special mention of course must be made to John Tyrrell and especially Sir Charles Mackerras who has long been my foremost inspiration. Already in 1993, the first recording I listened to of Jenufa was with Sir Charles, and it was his interpretation of Jenufa which led me to learn the Czech language and study Janacek operas in Prague and Brno.

PLEASE WRITE TO ME WITH YOUR QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS ABOUT JANACEK OPERAS WHICH I WILL PUBLISH HERE.

best wishes,

Paul Mauffray