Marriage is not an easy thing, but Janáček's wife, Zdenka, really had her share of grief. She was one of the composer's piano pupils, when he was very young and living in Brno. They married, and had both a son, called Vladimir, and a daughter, called Olga. Both children died at an early age, an event which affected them profoundly, and which drove Janáček to complete his third opera Jenůfa. There marriage had been unstable since the death of both their children, and whilst the composer plunged himself into his work, he was also unfaithful. The following extract from Zdenka Janáčkova's memoirs, recently published as My Life with Janáček, and also available from the Bibliography page, tells of how during the Prague premiere of Jenůfa, Janáček was having an affair with a singer, Gabriela Horvátová. Whilst the Prague premiere of the opera was a great turning point in Janáček's career, it marked a considerable decline in his marriage, as can be seen from this extract.


While I was living through all this, the further fate of Jenůfa was being decided – and so, too, was mine. Marie Calma-Veselá knew all of Jenůfa. Once, during the [summer] holidays of 1915, she was singing the ‘Zdrávas královno’ [Jenůfa’s prayer to the Virgin Mary in Act II] from it to herself at home. At that very moment Director Schmoranz from the Prague National Theatre happened to be passing by with the [writer] Šípek-Peška. He stopped under the window and listened. Interested, he then asked what it was. Šípek knew that it was from Jenůfa and so one thing led to another until at about Christmas time Kovařovic accepted Jenůfa for the National Theatre in Prague. My husband and I were delighted and throughout the entire winter we lived happily and expectantly. When together, we spoke of almost nothing but Jenůfa. Leoš promised me that in the summer after the premiere we’d go together to Luhačovice and how beautiful it would be there. He told me every little detail as soon as he heard anything about the rehearsals for his opera. Nervously, he waited to see how it would be cast, especially the role of the Kostelnička. Then he found out that Mrs Gabriela Horvátová, of whom much was heard, would be singing it though so far he didn’t know her personally. He was pleased when Šípek wrote to him that she liked the role. Later she arrived in Brno to sing a guest performance in the Old Theatre. Leoš went to hear her and asked my advice about whether he should visit her. I urged him to do so. So he went to see her in the hotel Slavia, where she was staying. He returned somewhat disconcerted and, in answer to my questions whether he’d spoken with Mrs Horvátová, he said with embarrassment; ‘Yes, I spoke to her, but you know, she received me in bed.’

Until then my husband wasn’t used to the informal ways of the theatre, and with a woman, even when he was passionately courting her, he always respected her modesty and her shyness. Up till now, despite all his flirtations, he was inexperienced in erotic matters and, I’d say, innocent. He was thoroughly nonplussed that the lady had received him in bed. At the time I laughed at it: ‘That doesn’t matter, so long as she sings the Kostelnička well for you.’

They invited him to Prague for rehearsals. He was flustered, full of uncertainty as to how he’d be understood there. Every day he wrote to me in detail all about it. And Mrs Horvátová was soon the culmination of everything. When he arrived home, he just beamed, he spoke only of her. As if the other performers didn’t count for anything. After a few days he went to Prague again and brought back a photograph of Mrs Horvátová as Brünnhilde. New outbursts of enthusiasm, a new trip to Prague. But he continued to write to me daily from Prague. And in the letters he depicted Mrs Horvátová as an angel of virtue, as a charitable soul, wishing to give everything away. I knew only too well from previous occasions that for him this was the beginning of a new infatuation. When he arrived [15 May 1916] for the last time before the premiere, he was already completely besotted. I saw that Mrs Horvátová didn’t fascinate him merely as an artist but above all as a woman. She invited him to supper with her after the premiere. He told her that he wouldn’t be in Prague alone, but with his wife – that he had a beloved wife. So she invited me too. He informed me of this as if it were the most beautiful thing to be awaiting us in Prague. After that he left on the Monday [22 May 1916]; I was due to follow him on the Thursday. In the vestibule at home we said goodbye warmly. He said to me: ‘So see you in Prague’ and off he went.

Suddenly I was gripped by terrible pain and anxiety. I remained standing in the vestibule. For a moment it was as if I could see into the future. I hid my head in the corner behind the clothes rack and I knew it: Leoš was lost to me.

The premiere, which had seemed to me one of the most desirable things in the world, was now a horrible nightmare for me. I was frightened by it, I wondered whether I should go to it at all. Mářa [Marie Stejskalova, the Janáčeks’ maid] talked me out of this: ‘Don’t do it, go, the master would get very angry.’ And I’d already arranged to travel with Ida Dresslerová and Mrs Váchová, the judge’s wife. Besides, my husband wrote very beautifully to me every day. I was also frightened of upsetting him before the premiere. So we ladies went. Leoš came to meet me and took me to the hotel Imperial. He was pleased that I was there now, but I felt as if turned to stone. He took me to meet Mrs Horvátová right away. My heart was pounding when we entered her apartment. She was expecting us. Her husband wasn’t at home, in general they lived somewhat freely and one didn’t get in the other’s way at all. She caught hold of me, she embraced me and kissed me as if I were an old and beloved friend – she knew how to do things like that. I examined her discreetly but nevertheless thoroughly – I was so curious about her and up to now knew her only from the photograph. She was about 44 [she was 38]: taller than me, quite well-built, a brunette, with large black eyes, I’d call them ‘Junoaugen’, a large, sensuous mouth, coarse features, the expression of the face at times almost predatory. Lots of gestures, an exceptionally lively manner; she knew how to speak without stopping. Her behaviour wasn’t natural, everything was calculated for effect, but she did it so skilfully that she dazzled the unwary. And my husband, unfortunately, was one of those. It astounded him when she greeted me sweetly with a large bunch of flowers, he was happy when we exchanged pleasantries. Every moment he jumped up and kissed her hand. She told us many things which aimed to demonstrate her interest in Jenůfa: she had, she said, invited the director of the Vienna Opera to the premiere, and he would be sure to accept her invitation. My husband believed it all and was enthusiastic. But we women weighed each other up without any great illusions and found that there was no reason for enthusiasm. It probably became clear to Mrs Horvátová that I wouldn’t be such a pushover as my husband because later in the café, where I met her again after the visit, she withdrew her invitation to dinner after the premiere and determined that we should go instead to the hotel Paříž. Leoš wasn’t in the café with us. When my visit to Mrs Horvátová was done, they saw me home and together they went off to Mrs Gabriela Preissová [author of the play Her Stepdaughter on which Jenůfa is based], where they were invited, and then I didn’t see my husband until the evening in the Obecní dům [Municipal House]. There was tension between us – even in the evening, when we returned to the hotel. I waited for him to say at least a few nice words to me and tell me once again what had gone on in the theatre that day. Nothing. Complete estrangement. I went to bed on the ottoman and wept. Already now I knew for certain how the land lay.

On the day of the premiere, Friday 26 May, he ran off first thing in the morning. All he said to me was that he couldn’t come for me before the premiere and that we’d meet only afterwards in the hotel Paříž. He had to take Mrs Horvátová home after the performance, he said, and would come with her to the hotel only after that. Feeling lonely, I then walked around Prague the whole morning with Ida Dresslerová and my sister-in-law Joža Janáčková. Fearfully I prepared for the premiere. Mrs Horvátová, who had provided a seat for me, put some other friends of hers into my box as well, a young couple who were so taken up with themselves that we didn’t pay too much attention to one other. At first it made no difference to me: I was too scared about how Jenůfa would be received. Only after the first act when the curtain fell and the theatre thundered with warm applause did the weight fall from my heart. I’d so have liked to have had a word with Leoš, to have shown him my pleasure, to have asked him how he was feeling. But he didn’t come to see me. I sat alone even in the second interval. I didn’t dare go and see him, no one came to see me – I felt terribly isolated. I’d imagined the premiere so differently.

An extract from the memoirs of Janáček’s widow Zdenka Janáčková, My Life with Janáček, edited and translated by John Tyrrell (Faber and Faber, 1998)


The obsession with Gabriela Horvatová continued for a while, even up to the 1918 Vienna premiere of Jenůfa, at which he wanted Horvatová to sing, but eventually she was not able. He wrote to her:

‘How much I would have liked to have you here! You can’t imagine what I am experiencing.

Today the rehearsal was already in costumes. Sets, lighting, everything as at the performance.

[I wish you could see] this magnificence of colours – 150 folk costumes – the wonderful deep stage: everything new, sparkling! The mill and that long view into magnificent mountain scenery. In the sun so that the spectator almost sweats. Recruits, with the lad from the mill on a garlanded horse – it was a set for which I longed in Prague – in vain.

Mrs Weidt [the Vienna Kostlenička, a soprano member of Mahler’s ensemble] acts outstandingly – as directed by the producer. She is a soprano, and so she doesn’t have your silky, dark voice, so appropriate to the action – but she acts outstandingly. You must see her! There are moments when one is horror-struck.

And then just think, the Jenůfa [Maria Jeritza, Austrian soprano, who was also the first Jenůfa at the Met] is ideal. How those two ladies vie with one another! It can’t be described in words. The director [of the Vienna Hofoper] Gregor said to Mrs Weidt that she is singing a part the like of which she has never sung or known in her life.’

He continued

‘Do you remember how Prague was silent before the premiere in the National Theatre? The paper did not breathe a word about it until the very evening before the Národní listy carried a feuilleton by Dr Šilhan. We really know how to do ourselves down!’

The work was well received and an equal victory for Janáček as with the 1916 Prague premiere. For Zdenka it was the end of Leoš’s infatuation with Mrs Horvátová, but the beginning of the infatuation which was to last for the rest of his life, Mrs Kamila Stösslová, the wife of an antiques dealer from Pišek.


To her he wrote on the 22 January 1918


‘Do please decide on that journey to Vienna.
You have an evening dress; you don’t need a new one.
It’s meant to about 2 February.
You would give me pleasure; Zdenka would have someone to lean on for there won’t be much talk with me that evening. […]


The Stössels did in fact attend the performance, a rare event throughout their correspondence. Again, despite the glory of the premiere in the German-language the production in Vienna marked not just a career-step, but also an emotional one for Zdenka. For more on Janáček’s relationship with Kamila Stösslová click here.