Šarka (review)

Enthusiasts for Janáček's operas will welcome this edition, expertly edited by Jiří Zahrádka, a young Czech scholar who lives and works in the composer's beloved Brno. This early opera was badly in need of a new edition, given both the resurgence of interest in the composer's operas in recent years and the previous lack of scholarly and editorial interest in the composer's pre-Jenůfa works. In the light of Janáček research it seems likely that the composer was drawn to this subject because of its musico-dramatic possibilities, its nationalist subtext, and its fascinating female characters.

Šárka is the Amazonian maiden who, according to a fourteenth-century source, allows herself to be tied to a tree to entice Ctirad, a brave warrior who is her opponent. After he frees her, she offers him and his men intoxicating drinks and asks him to blow her hunting horn. He obliges and unwittingly alerts the hidden warrior maidens, who rush out and slaughter the men and take Ctirad captive. Once he is transported to their fortress Devin, the defeated Ctirad is taken to the river Vltava and broken on the wheel. When Premysl, the king, learns of the women's activities, his armies storm Devin, kill the maidens, and burn the fortress to the ground. Various sources detail Šárka's end; in one version she is buried alive, in another she wills herself to turn to stone, and in Julius Zeyer's libretto—the basis for Janáček's setting—heartbroken and defeated, she stabs herself to death.

As Janáček's first complete opera, Šárka offers scholars and enthusiasts alike the opportunity to view the 34-year-old composer's attempt at the genre and allows us to witness germinal features crucial to his later masterpieces. While this was his first full-length opera, Janáček was no stranger to musico-dramatic forms at the time of Šárka's inception. His choral works, such as Marycka Magdónova and Kantor Halfar, are effective and highly dramatic settings of Czech legends and topics and speak to his power in conveying the emotion and meaning of texts. Such choral settings are also evident in Šárka, which includes many extended choral scenes, an unwritten requirement for any national opera, since the chorus naturally serves as a visual and sonic representation of the people.

The tale of Šárka, which takes place in a nation besieged by Amazonian warriors, will have been an attractive choice for a composer who disdained the strong German presence in Brno. In a city where half of the population was German, Janáček's sentiments were well documented. In fact his father-in-law once remarked that 'Janáček's national fanaticism gives the impression of insanity'. Such a statement is borne out by the composer's writing and by his daily activities in Brno, such as his refusal to ride on the German-run trams or to patronize the local theatre that featured non-Czech works. Janáček and his audience could have read his setting of Šárka as an allegory of Czech lands under the thumb of foreign rule.

The Czech origination myth of the Princess Libuše is a subtext in the opera, which takes place under the patriarchial rule following Libuše's subjugation to her husband King Premysl. That the origination myth and so-called 'war of the maidens' interested Janáček foreshadows his later fascination with strong female characters. Beginning with Jenxfa in 1906 and until his death in 1928 the composer was repeatedly drawn to such figures. In Jenxfa the two female protagonists are linked with the topics of illegitimate childbearing, infanticide, and village mores, while Kát'a Kabanová chronicles a young wife's 'domestic imprisonment' and ultimate suicide. The Diary of One who Vanished, a song cycle based on manufactured folk poems describing a young man pulled from his world by the intoxicating presence of a Gypsy girl. Even in his last opera, From the House of...