Erika Davidson/Metropolitan Opera Archives

In Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “The Trespass,” a small, dirty piglet, escaping from some drunken men trying to hunt it for sport, finds its way into the temple garden owned by a stern, religious widow, Jaikali. Jaikali, revered and feared universally for her uncompromising religiosity, spontaneously offers the piglet refuge within the temple compound, barring the gates. The story ends with this poignant line: “[This] little matter no doubt pleased the God who watches over the welfare of all living things across the universe, but it infuriated the tiny gods of village society.”

Jaikali passed the test. Kostelnicka didn’t.

If, like me, you’re a Janácek fan, then you are probably well-acquainted with the older female gatekeepers of patriarchy who populate some of his better-known operas. A Godsend to elderly kunst-divas, these characters are mostly widows. The Kostelnicka differs from the Kabanicha and Mila’s mother in Osud by sharing protagonist status in the opera – in Czech, the opera is literally titled ‘Her Stepdaughter,’ thereby indicating that both Jenufa and the Kostelnicka are central to the plot. In her pre-infanticide monologue, she contemplates the fate of Jenufa’s illegitimate baby by her ne’er-do-well cousin Steva. This unfortunate newborn is a stain on the honor of the family and stands in the way of Jenufa’s marriage to the volatile Laca, who is under the impression that Jenufa has had a stillbirth. Jenufa, exhausted after childbirth, sleeps, while the Kostelnicka pours her heart out to us before wrapping the baby in a shawl and rushing outside into the frozen winter to commit a terrible crime.

A scrupulous, note-by-note analysis of the music isn’t so helpful to us here; Jenufa isn’t bel canto, the Kostelnicka isn’t La Favorita or Maria Stuarda, and there are no roulades, rondos, trills, or long, soft notes held over an orchestra for (checks timer) seconds, to analyze. The ‘Co chivila’ monologue, unaccompanied by glass harmonicas or flute cadenzas, isn’t pretty or beautifully eerie – it is of the earth, earthy, and therefore, all the more terrifying. It is also a brilliant foil to Jenufa’s own disoriented, pitiable monologue, sung immediately afterwards. The verismo-inflected music adds to the extreme dramatic tension. The monologue has three distinct parts: a slow, reflective beginning; a middle that lets the tension build up, culminating in the infanticide plan; and the big, brassy finale. We shall see how each of the following singers deals with the requirements of this harrowing little monologue.

There are multiple wonderful recordings of Jenufa, both ‘official’ studio ones, as well as live recordings and pirates; selecting only a handful from this treasure trove is not an easy task. The difficulty is somewhat augmented because Jenufa has frequently been recorded in translation, and those recordings are in no way inferior or second-rate. In the interests of brevity and for the purposes of this article, however, I’m leaving out singers as varied as Eva Randova, Amy Shuard, Pauline Tinsley, Margarete Klose, Martha Modl, Deborah Polaski, Jennifer Larmore and Eva Marton. Here are six different hair-raising renditions of the Kostelnicka’s pre-infanticide monologue.

Nadezda Kniplová

Nadezda Kniplová, a famous Czech operatic soprano, sings the role in the original language at the Janácek Theatre in Prague. Kniplova has a large voice with a metallic, dark timbre; she is at her prime in 1964, when this was recorded, and would go on to sing Wagnerian heroines at home and abroad. Unlike some of the other Wagnerians we will encounter later in this piece, she isn’t portraying the hapless Kostelnicka as a crone – this is a middle-aged, sturdy woman in full peasant gear, as opposed to an elderly crow of a woman all in black.

Her singing isn’t exactly subtle, but she is effective at portraying the Kostelnicka’s distress and grief. She cowers at the thought of the opprobrium she and her step-daughter would face in the village if Jenufa continues to dwell as an unwed mother; she does the finger-pointing and jeering bits very well; she blasts the phrase ‘fruit of sin, just like his miserable father Steva’ at the baby’s face with an intensity that would have scared any actual new-born to oblivion. This is not a performance meant for close-ups, but it must have been a thrilling account of the role in the theater.

Leonie Rysanek

Rysanek, known and loved by most for her vocal acting chops and her interpolated screams, sang the Kostelnicka multiple times towards the end of her career. There are recordings of her singing this role in Czech, English and German; my reason for selecting this particular recording is the availability of the entire thing on YouTube and the masterful conducting by Stuart Challendar.

Rysanek is very good in this dramatic role, and her acting is more subtle than Kniplová’s. Her vocalism is slightly reminiscent of her Met Lady Macbeth, sung many moons ago: anguished and passionate without having to resort to sprechstimme. Rysanek’s Kostelnicka is older and more weather-beaten than Kniplova’s, more distraught than angry. Her opening of the monologue is better internalized, too. Towards the end, she is physically affectionate to the baby she is about to destroy, holding the bundle of rags close to herself, and choking back a sob at the “… miserable father, Steva” phrase, as opposed to a snarl of anger. The dark, gloomy set design (with a single oil-lamp on stage) contributes to the environment of tragedy and adds a nightmare-like quality to the Kostelnicka’s actions: one wonders if she woke up the next morning thinking it was all a bad dream. Fun little piece of trivia: Lone Koppel, the Jenufa in this recording, went on to sing the Kostelnicka in the same production in 1992.

Magda Olivero

From one great scenery-chewer to another – here we have the legendary ‘last verista’ Magda Olivero tearing up the floorboards at La Scala. She is “step-mommie dearest” to Grace Bumbry and the opera is sung in Italian.

Olivero, known for her searing portrayals of ‘difficult women,’ is a revelation in the role. She does begin the monologue somewhat quietly, as befits the text, but her hysteria becomes more and more evident as the monologue progresses. If any of the Kostelnickas mentioned here were to plead an insanity defense, Olivero has the greatest possibility of being acquitted. There is no doubt some sorrow and anger in her “un attimo….un attimo…”, but the emotion that comes across as plain as pikestaff is sheer overwhelming hysteria – she is a woman, as Almodovar would say, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Despite the somewhat muddy, granular sound, and the overly muscular conducting by Jerzy Semkow, Olivero takes charge from the beginning and the hysteria builds up and builds up until it all comes crashing down as she imagines the villagers accusing her and her step-daughter of immorality.

Again, this is no demented crone, but a respectable middle-aged woman desperate to hold on to the currency of respectability – a Santuzza in her ‘golden years.’ Her voice-shredding cry of “Kostelnicka!” — if you listen to Olivero in Cavalleria Rusticana, she uses the exact same approach for “bada!” in the confrontation with Turiddu — is followed by a wild, feral howl of pain and fear. One can imagine her beating her breast as stereotypical Italian village women are often portrayed as doing in moments of extreme distress. The howl of pain is repeated when she come back on stage with the baby, before the “…child of sin” phrase. The final phrase before she rushes out again ends on a harsh, choking sob. Another unusual feature in this production is Bumbry’s account of Jenufa – she is calculated and overly dramatic at times, less a naïf and more a full-grown woman capable of independent decision-making. One wonders what she herself would have done to the baby if the Kostelnicka didn’t get there first.

Anja Silja

Sir Colin Davis and his perfect combination of terse and lyrical conducting carries the day here, although both the women (Roberta Alexander is the Jenufa) are very good. Silja portrays an overtly religious Kostelnicka: she is, perhaps, the most likely of the six women mentioned here to be the moral arbiter of an insular, gossipy community in which her stepdaughter’s infraction would mark her out instantly as a hypocrite. Her body language and general demeanor make her look somewhere between “forty and death” — between the sturdy youthfulness of Kniplová and the decrepitude of the haggard, white-wigged Rysanek.

Vocally, she is….mid-career Silja. It isn’t an instrument in perfect shape, and she goes off pitch once or twice, but her towering presence dominates the scene, and there is something ageless about it. Her steely tones and incisive diction highlight rather than obscure her pride and her love for her stepdaughter, warped – as a restored solo reveals – by domestic abuse. Tall, rangy, and draped in a shapeless black dress with a hanging crucifix necklace worthy of Fedora, she begins the monologue supporting herself on the doorframe, then sinks to her knees, ruminative and troubled. Unlike the others, she is initially seeking a (possibly divine) intervention to stave off disaster. There is a bench next to her reminiscent of a church pew, and she sings the middle section of the monologue like a prayer, on her knees, hands clasped, looking up at the crucifix on the wall (complete with a red votive candle burning away) for a sign that never comes – and then, it is too late.

Josephine Barstow

Josephine Barstow, a stalwart dramatic soprano with a somewhat wiry, acidic voice, has sung absolutely everything: from Salome to Gloriana, from Elle to Old Heidi, from Lady Macbeth to Iolanta. She was the Jenufa to Pauline Tinsley’s Kostelnicka at Welsh National Opera in 1975 (a performance featured on Chris’s Cache), so this is not her first time at this particular rodeo.

She is a committed, even-timbred Kostelnicka. One of the main reasons for her inclusion here is her crystal-clear diction and her expert handling of the text – I can understand almost every word of what she sings. Vocally, too, she is an absolute powerhouse – unlike some of her contemporaries who have sung the role at the ‘Moedlrollen’ stage of their careers, Barstow in 2003 has plenty of voice left and is not afraid to use it. If there is a hint of Mrs. Gaskell in her portrayal of the unfortunate sacristan, it most likely due to the translation. Sir Charles Mackerras is the conductor, and he brings his keen ear for inflections and changes of mood to Janácek.

Karita Mattila

Of currently active singers who have this role in their repertoire, Nina Stemme and Karita Mattila are perhaps the best known, and while the latter has a more glamorous sound than the former, my bet is that Stemme will continue singing the role longer, so perhaps her best account of the sung monologue is yet to come. Karita Mattila, another Jenufa-turned- Kostelnicka, has sung this role at a few venues, and the particular recording I’m including here is from San Francisco Opera, conducted by Jirí Belohlávek.

Mattila’s Kostelnicka is superbly acted, as one expects. She is understated and soft-grained at the beginning and only shows traces of hysteria towards the middle of the monologue. She doesn’t stand and blast the monologue at the audience like a Mitteleuropa battleaxe. Somehow, of all the Kostelnickas we have listened to so far, she is the most sophisticated, and her love for her stepdaughter is perhaps the deciding factor in her terrible act. She is also visibly scared for most of the aria, as if she already knows the enormity of the act she is about to commit. One senses her reluctance and abhorrence for her crime even as soon as she contemplates it.

Unlike Astrid Varnay or Jennifer Larmore (another ‘sophisticated’ Kostelnicka, like a character out of Scandi-noir), this Kostelnicka is not a gorgon, nor, like Olivero, gripped by powerful hysteria and therefore capable of the efficient disposal of any number of sin-begotten infants – this is a simpler performance and all the more nuanced for its simplicity. One is almost surprised that Mattila’s Kostelnicka does go through with the act – she has been such a generous, caring soul until this point.

‘Co chivila’ has sometimes been called the most harrowing five minutes of opera, and deservedly so, because it precedes an act of overwhelming evil born out of sheer desperation. In this and many other verismo operas, the entire motivation behind the crime would have been rendered unnecessary by the presence of healthcare for women and the removal of social stigma associated with abortion. In 2025, we still have a significant percentage of the world’s population clamoring for the servitude of women and forced birthing followed by little or no aftercare. Maybe, even now, we are not too far removed from the world Janácek portrays in Jenufa – we just have better Wi-Fi.

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