Jenufa occupies a special place within Leos Janácek’s oeuvre for cementing his legacy as one of opera’s most profound dramatists. While its score doesn’t showcase the radical structural, harmonic or rhythmic innovations contained in latter masterpieces like The Makropulos Affair or From the House of the Dead, it is the first and perhaps the most accessible of his operas to integrate the aesthetic hallmarks of his mature period. Its triumphant 1916 staging at Prague’s National Theater also marked Janácek’s most important commercial and critical breakthrough, bringing him widespread international acclaim and ushering in the extraordinary creative flowering of his final decade.

In adapting the libretto of Gabriela Preissová’s rustic stage play Její pastorkyna (the title by which the opera in recognized in the Czech world), Janácek identified a natural outlet for implementing the Moravian linguistic and melodic idioms he’d documented during his early folkloric research. Jenufa consequently emerged as the first of his works to integrate his original and rhythmically propulsive “speech-melody” (nápevky mluvy) technique of lyricizing Czech speech with idiosyncratic orchestral motifs and jagged, angular textures to heighten theatrical expression. The resulting score is a masterwork of searing dramatic and psychological urgency that seizes its audiences from its iconic mill-wheel opening bars through its cathartic finale. Janácek’s music was not only integral for immortalizing Její pastorkyna as one of opera’s enduring works, but also for becoming the play’s definitive incarnation within the canon.

Janácek’s dramaturgical gifts can be most powerfully experienced in his development of vividly realized characters within scenes of tautly calibrated tension. Nowhere is this more apparent in Jenufa than with the extraordinary arc he constructs between the second Act’s devastating infanticide and the opera’s redemptive finale. When Act II opens, the prelude thunders with a claustrophobic and turbulent swirl of instrumentation that mirrors the moral crisis brimming within the Kostelnicka’s psyche. From that point, the tableau unravels as an unbroken sequence of internal and external confrontations that proceeds with a precision and economy unrivalled in the operatic medium. Although the final Act is aesthetically different, Janácek’s depiction of Jenufa’s act of forgiveness too lands with a shattering transcendence during the opera’s culmination.

The most recent quarter of 2025 offered admirers of Janácek’s most renowned theatrical work a wealth of distinguished concerts and recordings. First, the Metropolitan Opera in early May unearthed a legendary performance from its archives that combines an era-defining pairing between Gabriela Benacková’s Jenufa and Leonie Rysanek’s Kostelnicka. Benacková’s radiant and vulnerable reading of the opera’s heroine and Rysanek’s take-no-prisoners approach to the village sacristan make revisiting this 1992 recording essential and can be heard on the Met Opera website’s On Demand streaming platform. Later that month, the Cleveland Orchestra presented for its season’s annual opera program an emotionally weighty concert performance headlined by Latonia Moore and Nina Stemme. Finally, the London Symphony Orchestra recently released their house label’s newest recording of the work as the third installment in Sir Simon Rattle’s ongoing survey of Janácek’s operas.

Sir Simon Rattle’s exploration of Janácek’s dramas for the LSO Live label is one of the classical recording industry’s most consequential recent projects, echoing what Sir Charles Mackerras achieved with his landmark historic opera sets on Decca. Much like the label’s commendable outings with The Cunning Little Vixen and Káťa Kabanová, Rattle’s new Jenufa enriches the discography with a musically imaginative interpretation anchored in the critical 1908 Brno score. Reconstructed by Mackerras and the Janácek scholar John Tyrrell from autograph manuscripts and archival material in the 1980s, this edition restores the composer’s more progressive harmonies and rhythmic contours that were smoothed out in Karel Kovarovic’s late Romantic reorchestration, which dominated performance practice for much of the 20^thcentury. In this latest release, recorded live in January of last year, Rattle, the virtuosic London Symphony Orchestra, and the label’s superb engineering team reveal one of the most sonically well-differentiated and dramatically propulsive realizations of Janácek’s original conception to emerge since Mackerras’s own pioneering recording from over 4 decades ago.

An avid proponent of Janácek’s music, Rattle has performed Jenufa more frequently than any of the composer’s operatic scores. Broadcasts that depict his engagement with this opera can be traced dating back to his tenure as the director of the Berliner Philharmoniker. In this LSO recording, Rattle distills his experience with Janácek’s idiom into an interpretation that not only masterfully navigates the score’s myriad shifting motifs and episodes, but also unifies these variegated elements into a cohesive, continuously sustained dramatic arc. Under his baton, the London Symphony’s forces render the contrapuntal strata of Janácek’s orchestration with clarity while preserving both the varnished warmth and the lyrical fluency of the ensemble’s playing.

Aesthetically, the orchestra’s recent immersion into Janácek’s theatrical scores has paid off in their heightened realization of the composer’s unique sound world. Compared to their previous performances in The Cunning Little Vixen and Káťa Kabanová, the orchestral playing in this new Jenufa sounds more precisely attuned to reproducing Janácek’s kaleidoscopic textures and capturing his idiom’s broad expressive palette.

During the opera’s more violent episodes, the ensemble’s colorations and attacks on instrumental passages explode with a visceral brutality unheard in their previous projects. A sheer intensity of sound truly jumps at you when Laca slashes Jenufa’s face, and the string and brass sections bristle with a caustic, unhinged intensity during the Kostelnicka’s second-Act descent. Rattle also extracts radiant lyricism from his players during the opera’s more serene and optimistic passages, perhaps most evident in Benjamin Gilmore’s gossamer violin solo that imbues Jenufa’s prayer with a soulful humanity. If the London Symphony’s aural tapestry doesn’t fully capture the unique accents and tonal qualities innate to the most celebrated Czech orchestras, this performance abounds with a wealth of detail and dramatic commitment, enhanced by a cast who enriches their interpretations with credibility and pathos.

Any successful performance of Jenufa rests upon the strengths of the soprano leads who portray the commanding women at the heart of Preissová’s libretto. While these London concerts were originally conceived as a showcase for Asmik Grigorian’s acclaimed interpretation of the title role, her indisposition caused her to be replaced by the Swedish soprano Agneta Eichenholz. Eichenholz is a lighter lyric soprano whose most distinguished contribution to the discography prior to this release is an entrancing interpretation of Alban Berg’s titular femme fatale in Lulu from a video recorded from the Royal Opera House.

While Eichenholz possesses neither the amplitude nor the steeliness of Grigorian’s soprano, her fragile timbre and her inward realization of the character lend her interpretation an arresting sincerity that is sometimes missing from the Lithuanian soprano’s more eccentric reading. Even with the support of the recording engineers, one senses that certain passages stretch her resources in the acoustic of the Barbican, especially during her heated confrontations with Števa and Laca. Yet it is precisely in the role’s more introspective moments wherein Eichenholz’s lyrical interpretation blossoms with a luminous clarity.

In Act II, she evokes simultaneously through subtle vocal colorations her character’s psychological trauma, her isolation and the tenderness she feels for the child she conceived out of wedlock. Jenufa’s great prayer—especially the “Salve Regina” (Zdrávas královno)—is shaped with an ethereal, dreamlike quality and a purity that transforms it into the opera’s second emotional centerpiece. By the final Act, the quiet magnanimity she expresses towards the Kostelnicka, Laca, and Steva conveys the most disarming sincerity amid her emotional devastation. If the discography has preserved more definitive interpreters of Jenufa, Eichenholz remains a compelling contender within Rattle’s moving conception of the work.

Equal importance must be given to the casting of the stern and psychologically complex Kostelnicka, the village sacristan responsible for enacting the opera’s central tragedy. In this recording, the accomplished Swedish mezzo soprano Katarina Karnéus brings an assured vocal technique and keen textual sensitivity to address the broad musical and emotional compass of her career’s most dramatic character to date. Throughout the opera, she consistently commands the aural stage with an authoritative tone and a riveting dramatic presence.

Mark Allan

Despite the brevity of her part in Act I, Karnéus’s compelling entrance conveys her character’s severity when she sharply interrupts the village festivities. In the opera’s middle Act, the unraveling of her character’s psyche is traced through her multiple confrontations with the opera’s protagonists. Karnéus clearly articulates the character’s rigid moral convictions and the turbulent breadth of conflicting emotions born out of her love for her stepdaughter. Under her hands, the Kostelnicka’s soliloquy “Co chvíla” builds up with an electrifying intensity that explodes with searing emotional power when she concludes it with “vidite ji, Kostelnicku!” By the opera’s conclusion, her delivery of the torturous emotional conflict and the valedictory words she expresses to her stepdaughter cap one of the more memorable traversals of this character to date.

As Laca, the exceptional Czech tenor Ales Briscein embodies one of the discography’s most deeply felt performances, charting a compelling arc from the jealous, volatile figure of Act I to the steadfast partner who supports Jenufa in the opera’s redemptive finale. A Janácek specialist and a mainstay at both the National Theatre in Prague and Berlin’s Staatsoper, Briscein brings thrilling clarion singing to his confrontation with the Kostelnicka in Act II and a striking gentleness during his appeal to Grandmother Buryja in Act III. His interpretation is sufficiently distinguished to stand alongside the great Wieslaw Ochman’s defining characterization on Mackerras’s recording. As Steva, Nicky Spence gives an equally persuasive performance, capturing the character’s brash charm and instability with his sappy, burnished tenor. Spence, himself a noted Laca from Covent Garden’s presentation of the new Claus Guth production, plays Steva with even greater vocal credibility, and is perhaps most memorable in his second Act confrontation with the Kostelnicka.

The remainder of the opera’s supporting roles are lovingly cast with singers who inhabit Janácek’s idiom with a feel for his theatrical text and the musicality of his phrases. Where Mackerras’s celebrated Decca recording enlisted luminaries such as Lucia Popp (Karolka), Marie Mrázová (Starenka Buryjovka), and Václav Zítek and Vera Soukupová in smaller roles, Rattle’s cast offers equally compelling contributions from contemporary talents like Evelin Novak, Carole Wilson, Jan Martiník, Hannah Hipp, and Claire Barnett-Jones. As with his previous releases in this series, the primary draw remains Sir Simon Rattle and the superb London Symphony Orchestra, who play this emotionally volatile score with exceptional color, precision, and character. Though my personal allegiance still lies with Mackerras’s landmark interpretation on Decca, Rattle’s account reveals its own virtues—inviting repeated listening to savor the intricate textures and psychological nuance behind Janácek’s music. With The Excursions of Mr. Broucek slated for release next year and The Makropulos Affair to follow, the LSO Live’s operatic survey continues to be a thrilling prospect for admirers of Janácek’s operatic legacy.