In her brave and riveting final confession, she is able to admit that her own pride played a role, but she cares as much about Jenůfa's forgiveness as she does for her Savior's. Kostelnička-a deeply religious woman-takes on (with her awful crime of killing the child) the threat not only of public exposure but of eternal damnation, all out of concern that Jenůfa’s future be happy (and Števa-free). (When Jenůfa becomes a mother, she gets musically enveloped in a Marian glow, as in her lovely second act moonlit prayers to the Virgin.) This is the rare opera in which all four principal characters-even the vain, shallow, entitled Števa-undergo perceptible moral transformation. But all this "realism" coexists with a Christian framework of forgiveness more essential to Jenůfa’s core than even that underpinning La fanciulla del West. As in Cavalleria rusticana, premarital sex and provincial morality instigate the tragedy. Jenůfa has been called "Czech verismo": its narrative span takes in a slashing, an abandonment, an infanticide, a public confession and an arrest. The plot involves two tenor suitors (the stepbrothers Laca and Števa) but revolves around the interrelation and identification of the promising village beauty Jenůfa -not only literate but a teacher, like many members of the composer's family-and her strict, much respected stepmother, called "Kostelnička" ("the Sextoness") for her piety and good works. Proportionally, the Czech operatic tradition has embraced more female-engendered librettos than any other, way back to Smetana and Dvořák in the 19th century. Having worked on an earlier opera ( The Story of a Romance) with journalist and feminist Gabriela Preissová, he decided to adapt her controversial play about Moravian village life as a libretto. Janáček's deeply moving opera, premièred in 1904, rides very much on the shoulders of its two leading women-both of whom are actually implicit in the original title, Její Pastorkyná ( Her Stepdaughter)-still used in the Czech context.
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