Janáček was born in Hukvaldy in Moravia in 1854. As a boy he became a chorister at the Augustinian ‘Queen’s’ Monastery in Brno. From his education in Brno (including running the choir at the monastery) he went on to study at the Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna conservatories. In 1881 he founded a college of organists at Brno, which he directed until 1920, the very year he and Zdenka Schulzová were married. In Brno he established a strong foundation for musical education, with violin and singing classes, an orchestra and later piano classes. When in 1884 the Provisional Czech Theatre opening in Brno Janáček founded Hudební listy, a review-based journal, through which we can now understand and appreciate many of Janáček’s feelings about the work of his contemporaries. His relations with these establishments were not easy, and he not only resigned from the Gymnasium (where he also taught), but separated from his wife for a couple of years after the birth of their first child, Olga in 1882. Their second child, a son, Vladimír was only two when he died of meningitis in 1890.

It is after this time that Janáček composed his first opera, Šárka. However, despite the beauty of the score itself (it is heavily reminiscent of Dvořák and Smetana) Janáček had problems obtaining rights for the libretto (something he did after the composition of the opera). The opera remained un-performed until his 70th birthday. After the disillusionment with the failure of staging his first opera Janáček threw himself into a comprehensive study of Moravian music. It is not surprising then that both of his next completed operas are Moravian ones. Both Počátek Románu (The Beginning of a Romance) and Jenůfa are taken from works by Gabriela Preissová. Where Počátek Románu is folkdances and self-contained songs, Jenůfa was a full-length and full-blown operatic achievement. It is not surprising that this has become one of the most enduring of Janáček’s works.

However, the composition of Jenůfa was protracted, and the effects of Janáček’s maturing style can be seen in the stylistic differences between the first act and the last two. Many catalysts fed into the completion of his opera. The impact of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades (which Janáček reviewed for Hudební listy), his increasing awareness of the power of the imitation of speech into his operatic style, and, I would argue, the death of his daughter, all feed into the powerful work that became, and is, Jenůfa. As the Janáčeks’ maid Mařa Stejskalová wrote later remembering the completion of the opera

Janáček completed the score of the opera and played the completed score to her four days before her death on 26th February 1903. Although the opera was well received in Brno, it had yet to catch on in Prague. The head of the National Opera was Karel Kovařovic, and his disapprobation of the score is well documented, and his insistence on not performing Janáček’s opera (mainly due to Janáček’s own dislike of Kovařovic’s The Bridegrooms) continued until 1916, when the opera was performed in Kovařovic’s own orchestration. But the success that the Prague premiere brought to Janáček was not paralleled in the experiences of his wife Zdenka. Her husband's infatuation with Gabriela Horvátová, the Kostelnička in the Prague premiere of Jenůfa, led directly to Zdenka trying to commit suicide and her subsequent informal divorce. These events are all described in detail in her memoirs, which have been recently published (edited and translated by John Tyrrell) as The Memoirs of Zdenka Janáčková: My Life with Janáček (Faber, 1998). Click here to read some of Zdenka Janáčková's reminiscences of the performance.

Indeed, life became increasingly difficult for Zdenka, just as the final flowering of Janáček's productivity was about to start. Eventually the Horvátová affair was ended, and although they were never fully reconciled, the Janáčeks lived a more settled life. The independence of Czechoslovakia in 1918, after the end of the war was an important step for a profoundly patriotic man. On an emotional front though meeting with Kamila Stösslová in the spa town of Luhačovice in 1917 was to prove decisive. Here started a lengthy correspondences, and it remains one of the greatest we have to date from a composer. Over 700 letters have been collected and they show much insight into the workings of the man who produced Kát’a Kabanová, Příhody Lišky Bystroušky (The Cunning Little Vixen), Vĕc Makropulos and his final opera Z mrtvého domu (From the House of the Dead) in this last decade. With Kát’a Kabanová, Příhody Lišky Bystroušky and Vĕc Makropulos and the quasi-operatic song-cycle Zápisník zmizelého (‘Diary of One who Disappeared’), Janáček had no qualms expressing the influence this simple woman had on his life.

These operas, after the success of Jenůfa and the premiere of his Výlety pánĕ Broučkovy in Prague, were all premiered in Brno followed by a premiere in Prague. Through this period Janáček found time to compose his string quartets and the ever-popular works of the Glagolitic Mass and the Sinfonietta. The intensification of his relationship with Kamila Stösslová, however, took its toll. Although the relationship with her remained unconsummated, Zdenka Janáčkova’s marriage to her husband had never been easy, and this put a huge strain on it. Janáček died just after the completion of the autograph score of his final opera, Z mrtvého domu. Whilst in Hukvaldy, where he was born (where he had bought a holiday home) he had caught a chill, which developed into pneumonia. He died on the 10th August 1928 at 10am. At the large public funeral held in Brno the final scene of his Příhody Lišky Bystroušky was played, and shortly after his death his Second String Quartet was given publicly. It wasn’t until 1930 that a version of Z mrtvého domu completed by the orchestrator of the third act of Šárka and another pupil was performed.

Throughout his life of domestic fireworks we see there are two things which influenced him profoundly, over and over again: a sense of place, and a sense of those whom he loved and who loved him. The impact of Kamila Stösslová cannot be emphasised enough when considering the great operas of his maturity. For a man whose first main opera was heard in his 50th year, the achievement of Leoš Janáček is immense and emotionally startling.