Out of Control: Jenufa and her Stepmother
By Leann Davis Alspaugh

"In every creature there is a spark of God," wrote composer Leoš Janácek. In his opera Jenufa, this spark imparts dramatic intensity to the moral at the center of the work. As Jenufa moves from immaturity to forgiveness, her stepmother the Kostelnicka-the title refers to her important position as "sacristaness" of the village church (kostel)-takes another path, presuming to think that she understands God's will. In her, the divine spark becomes a force of human ego and the result is disastrous.

Sometimes called the first Moravian national opera, Jenufa is a dramatic vehicle of considerable intensity and economy of plot and character. In adapting the 1890 play Her Stepdaughter by Gabriela Preissová, Janácek turned a story saturated in Moravian style into a parable outside of time and place. The opera circles compulsively around the concepts of will and control: Who is in charge? How are lives to be lived and by whose standards? Can the ego submit to a force greater than itself?

Keeping Secrets
The opera opens with an introduction to a tightly-knit village community. Jenufa, Laca, Števa, Grandmother Buryja and the others depend on each other's industry and honesty-but Jenufa has a secret, one so damaging that she must hide it. In doing so, she violates the village's unwritten rules of openness and trust.

Village life centers around the mill. More than a simple pastoral device, the mill serves as the primary motivation for all the opera's characters. As the river flows past it, the mill wheel turns, and the grain is ground for bread. As it has done for generations, life follows the seasons, linking nature and man. However, the harmony of village life is about to be shattered by secrets, jealousy, and false pride. A figure in authority will fall and the lowly will rise. The correctives of Christianity will be forgotten and there will be violence and retribution. Ironically, it is the person of highest moral authority in the village who will precipitate this chaos.

Enter the Kostelnicka
From her first line, the Kostelnicka asserts her power, predicting Jenufa's future as a beggar, reduced to scraping for coins because her husband is a wastrel. The Kostelnicka speaks from experience, having thrown her love away on such a man. She is a formidable figure, one who cannot be easily dismissed as a bitter old woman. As the village sacristan, she is endowed with the authority of the church. In fact, she really shares top billing with Jenufa as the opera's main character, and it is worth delving deeper into her character.

From ancient times, the sacristan acted as a monastic official in charge of the vestments, the candles, and the sacred liturgical vessels. Originally, the sacristan was a priest, unless there was a shortage of priests, then a layman might step in. In medieval times, the sacristan was often a lay woman. In the sixteenth century, the reforms of the Council of Trent led to a reduction of duties and authority for female sacristans. To what extent parishes observed the rules regarding female sacristans often depended on factors such as the church's remoteness from a diocesan center or political unrest. In 1927, for example, a lay woman sacristan in Vladivostok maintained the Most Holy Mother of God cathedral for several years because the previous pastor had been shot by the communists.

Undoubtedly, the female sacristan, or sextoness, filled an important position in a community of believers. Though she might never intend to impersonate or supplant a priest, the absence of a pastor allowed the sacristaness to assert herself literally and morally. In short, she might be, as Janácek portrays her, the highest moral authority of her village.

The Kostelnicka takes her job quite seriously. It is easy to imagine that she has worked hard to erase the memory of her youthful transgressions and to establish herself as a moral exemplar. When she sees Jenufa yearning for Števa, all those old memories come back, and the Kostelnicka foresees not only her stepdaughter's unhappiness, but also irreparable damage to her own hard-won position. While this is all too human, the Kostelnicka as a representative of the church has an obligation to modesty and humility, yet she has put this aside in favor of an egotistical imperative to change the course of events.

Taking Control
Sealed in her cottage at the opening of the second act, it is now the Kostelnicka who has a secret-she has spread the rumor that Jenufa is in Vienna since the truth is too painful. She presides over a bleak, closed interior, shuttered against sunlight and prying eyes. The mood is set by a grim duet in which Jenufa coos to the sleeping baby, while the Kostelnicka wishes God would take the child away.

Fighting to maintain control of the situation, the Kostelnicka administers a sleeping draught to Jenufa and summons Števa, hoping to convince him to marry her stepdaughter. He declines, prompting the Kostelnicka to utter the chilling line, "if only I could kill the baby and throw it at his feet to reach his conscience." Certainly, no one could accuse Števa of an overly-active conscience, but where is that of the Kostelnicka?

Laca enters next and the Kostelnicka challenges him to hear the truth: "I will tell you everything and test your love." At this moment, the Kostelnicka's soul is in the balance, and it is she who is being tested. Instead of trying to persuade Laca that he could love the child as he loves its mother, the Kostelnicka presumes to play God. The child that she has helped into the world, that she has named and baptized, is then condemned to death-first in word, then in deed.

As the Kostelnicka rationalizes her intention, she struggles with her clamorous ego, forgetting the Christian principles on which she has based her life and reputation. The desire to control lives is so strong that she is willing to commit a sin merely to save face. She temporizes, contending that by sending the boy to God she will keep him pure. This is sheer hypocrisy made even more reprehensible by her position as a woman of the church. In her fallen state, she convinces herself that she understands God's plan and can interpret it to direct the lives around her.

Like Lady Macbeth, the Kostelnicka screws her courage to the sticking place and takes the child to the icy millrace. That this place so closely associated with life should be the site of death shows just how lost she is. However, murder will out and, at the first thaw of spring, the baby is discovered. At this point, the Kostelnicka has lost complete control of herself; she is ill, weak, "fading away." Just as she prepares to bless Jenufa and Laca, villagers announce the grisly discovery. It is fitting that the Kostelnicka's moral abasement should be exposed at just this moment. She has failed in virtually every aspect of her duty as a sacristan, not to mention her arguably more important role as a mother and grandmother.

Her confession-"The deed was mine"-stops the mob from charging Jenufa with the infant's murder. Just as her words restore order among the villagers, so they lift the Kostelnicka from her degradation. She ends with the realization of her selfishness and turns back toward Jenufa and the others. From standing alone in false pride, the Kostelnicka rejoins the community. Though she will be tried and sentenced to death, she has the forgiveness and love of Jenufa. The Kostelnicka's genuine contrition also restores her to the love of God.

The Tragic Kostelnicka
A paradox lies at the heart of the opera. Jenufa, pregnant and unwed, has sinned against the morality of the village, yet it is she alone who can forgive the Kostelnicka and restore to her the strength to accept the law's punishment and thus gain redemption. In classical tragedy, the dramatic tension must be resolved in favor of understanding and order rather than incomprehension and chaos (the latter would be the province of the moderns). The Kostelnicka embodies this tragic model, and her return to the will of the law and the community restores order and, in turn, illuminates Jenufa's true character.

Leann Davis Alspaugh writes about opera from Boston.