Leoš Janácek was born on July 3, 1854 in Hukvaldy, Moravia. Both his father and his grandfather were schoolmasters and musicians in the small village. The seventh of nine surviving children in his family, Janácčk was sent away at the age 11 in order to relieve the overcrowded household and became a chorister at the Augustinian ‘Queen’s’ monastery in Brno. Though his education at the monastery was interrupted by a few different factors including the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Cecilian movement which ceased instrumental teaching and forced choristers to become a purely vocal ensemble, it did play an important role in Janácek’s education, especially when Pavel Křĭžkovský, a leading Moravian composer, took an interest in his musical development. He went on to study at the Prague Organ School and at the conservatories in Leipzig and Vienna. His financial situation during his studies prevented him from participating in his musical surroundings and it is believed that he was only able to go to the opera twice during this time, Der Freischütz and Cherubini’s Les deux journees in Vienna, neither of which he enjoyed.
He returned to Brno and studied at the Czech Teacher’s Institute where he eventually began to teach music. He also taught singing at the Old Brno Gymnasium and was the director of the Organ School in Brno, which he founded and modeled after his alma mater the Prague Organ School. During this time he also conducted choral societies in Brno and founded a musical journal for which he served as editor and chief contributor. It was this role which required him to review most of the operas that took place in Brno’s newly opened Provisional Czech Theatre and soon he began to think of composing an opera himself. In 1887 Janácek began to compose his first opera Sărka. He used a libretto based on Czech mythology by Julius Zeyer, who had intended the work for Dvořák and therefore refused to allow the relatively unknown Janácek permission. Undeterred by Zeyer’s rejection, Janácek wrote the piano score for the work and then showed it to Dvorák. After revisions, he went on to score two of the three acts, however his work on the piece ended there. During this time, Janácek was asked by one of his friends to help collect folksongs to be published, and this new attention to his native melodies led him to turn his back on the Romanticism of Sărka and devote himself to Moravian folk music. He wrote many pieces drawing from him native music including a folk ballet Rákos Rákoczy and a one-act opera Pačátek románu, the libretto of which was based on a play by Gabriela Preissová. A second play from Preissová would become the basis for Janácek’s opera, Jenůfa, which took the composer nearly a decade to complete. But even after the opera’s premiere in 1904, the composer was still making changes in effort to boost its popularity. After failed attempts to submit the score to the Prague National Theatre, Janáček moved onto other operas. Osud (Fate) premiered in 1906 and Výlety páně Broučkovy (The Excursions of Mr. Brouček) was delayed with librettist problems and finally deserted in 1913 with only two of the planned three acts completed. In 1915 a campaign by Janácek’s followers to have Jenůfa performed in Prague finally paid off. By May 1916 the opera had gained a huge success with the public and a few months later Universal Edition purchased the foreign-language rights.
After disappointments with his previous librettists, Janácek made the decision to do all of his own adaptations for the remainder of his operas. His next operas, all composed after the age of 65, Kat a Kabanova and Vec Makropulos (The Makropulos Affair) were based on plays and Prihody Lisky Bystousky (The Cunning Little Vixen) and Z mrtveho domu (From the House of the Dead) were both based on novels. By this time Janácek stopped trying to present his operas in Prague. Instead they each had their premiere in Brno where he was able to make changes and adjustments during rehearsal and then present them a year or so later in Prague. In addition to these four operas Janácek wrote some of his other well-known works during this time such as the Glagolitic Mass and the Sinfonietta. Shortly after completing the autographed score of From the House of the Dead Janácek died in Ostrava on August 12, 1928.
