Jenufa eventually became Leos Janacek's greatest triumph, in terms both of its artistry and of the advance it generated in the composer's reputation. The triumph was slow to come in both cases. Janacek first encountered the play Jeji pastorkyna (Her Foster Daughter), by Gabriela Preissova, sometime in the early 1890s, and began working on the opera in earnest in 1894. However, the work was not completed until 1903. The delay was partly caused by Janacek's busy schedule; during this period, he held teaching posts at three institutions, organized exhibitions and concerts, and prepared folk song editions. The prolonged sickness and eventual death at age 20 of Janacek's only surviving child, Olga, also doubtless slowed the composition of the opera. (During her last days, Olga asked her father to play Jenufa on the piano, a request he gladly granted.) Yet the best explanation is that Jenufa seems to have pushed Janacek toward a reconsideration of how to create drama and how to portray character in music. The intense work that resulted from this long creative effort remains preeminent in Janacek's oeuvre.

The play's Moravian setting doubtless helped to inspire Janacek, and the plot teems with dramatic moments. Briefly, Jenufa is expecting Steva's baby, but after a quarrel the jilted Laca slashes Jenufa's cheek, rendering her unappealing to Steva. Jenufa's powerful stepmother Kostelnicka persuades Laca to marry Jenufa; Laca balks when he hears that Jenufa has just had Steva's baby, so Kostelnicka tells him the baby has died, and drowns it herself in a fit of shame and desperation. At Jenufa and Laca's wedding feast, someone finds the baby; Jenufa admits it is hers, and Steva is disgraced. Kostelnicka begs forgiveness and freely gives herself up to the law; Laca, impressed by Jenufa's bravery, offers to join her in a new life.

Musically, Jenufa marked the first time Janacek based an entire work on his principle of the melodic curves of speech. This principle was based on a devotion to realism in musical portrayal, and indeed many of these melodies were reduced by Janacek from actual conversations. As a result, there are very few long, broad melodies in Jenufa (although Jenufa's "Ave Maria" is a notable exception); instead, words and phrases are repeated often and throughout. This feature lends an obsessive feel to the score—very much attuned to the material, and imparting a dramatic immediacy that strikes hardest at moments of the most import, such as Kostelnicka's confession and the cathartic finale that follows. Janacek also uses some of the speech melodies as motives; one of these, representing guilt, appears in the opera over and over, each time with additional impact. Jenufa was premiered in Janacek's home city of Brno in 1903, but took over a decade to reach the opera house in Prague; after a long struggle, the premiere in the Czech capital was a rousing success, and led to international performances and deserved acclaim for the work and its composer.

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