BLOOD WEDDING.(Opera Review)

A few minutes before the end of Leos Janacek's "Jenufa," now at the Metropolitan Opera, the orchestra unleashes a long-drawn-out, floor-trembling storm of sound, in the elemental key of C. A pause follows, during which the audience may be tempted to make a noise of its own, particularly when a singer of the magnitude of Karita Mattila has been working at the height of her art. But the hall is silent; even those who do not know the opera feel that something remains to be said. Over pulsing chords, which have the rhythm of heavy breathing, violins and soprano begin to sing an entirely new melody, in the new key of B-flat--a long, sustained note, followed by a quickly shaking figure, with a shadow of C below. The music has the motion of a bird in flight: it glides, beats its wings, dips down, and soars again into blue heaven. Then another new theme surfaces, one that cuts through the octave like the sun at noon. The music disappears into brilliant chords of E-flat, bedecked with overtones and shimmering arpeggios.

It is one of the most uncannily beautiful scenes in opera, and all the more remarkable for coming at the end of one of opera's creepiest tales. Jenufa is a Moravian peasant girl who has had a baby out of wedlock with her cousin Steva. When Steva learns of the infant, he flees, and shortly thereafter the baby disappears. Laca, Steva's jealous half brother, steps in to marry Jenufa, which he has wanted to do all along, to the point of violent rage. In the middle of the wedding, terrified shrieks rise offstage: a baby's corpse has been found beneath the ice. Jenufa recognizes her child, and the villagers advance on her with murderous intent. Then Jenufa's stepmother--the Kostelnicka--makes a blood-curdling confession: in an effort to save the reputation of the family, she killed the baby herself. Once the pillar of the village church, she is dragged off to what will surely be a bad fate, and Jenufa is left alone with her new husband. This is where Janacek stages his fake climax in C major, and we realize that the preceding horror has been a test for the couple. That birdlike melody expresses Jenufa's loving resignation, as she gives Laca permission to walk away from the ugliness that is surrounding her. Laca answers, "I would bear far more than that for you. What does the world matter, when we have each other?" At that moment, Janacek's two closing melodies merge into one.

"Jenufa" is a deceptively "folkish" opera that reasserts its greatness with each performance. It begins small, with colorful scenes of village life; the vocal lines follow the rhythms and pitches of conversational speech. By the end, Janacek is working on a grand scale, his music radiating an almost religious ecstasy. There is another melody in the repertory that glides and shakes as Jenufa's song does--the theme of reconciliation that rises over the ruins of Valhalla, at the end of the "Ring." The love of Jenufa and Laca, like the love of Wagner's Brunnhilde, acquires a cosmic, world-changing force. Yet Janacek never loses ...