John Tyrrell

Lecture
John Tyrrell on the occasion of the award of the title doctor honoris causa

 

Mr. Rector and those conferring my degree at today’s ceremony, prorectors, pro-deans, ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests and friends: It is a great honour for me to be here and to receive recognition for my work on Janaček. It is wonderful to receive recognition directly from the Janaček Academy of Performing Arts, an institution that carries the name of Janaček. It is the continuation and realization of his aspirations and dreams. During his time, his humble Organ School became a conservatory, but he always had something grander in mind, a higher music school. Surely Janaček himself would be proud that today students come to JAMU not only from all over the Czech Republic but from the whole world. It is also wonderful to receive recognition in this beautiful historic concert hall, which is so intimately connected with Czech national aspirations in Brno. It is a building in which, countless times, Janaček himself conducted concerts, organized concerts and heard performances of his own works. And it is wonderful to receive recognition from an institution which is exceptionally choosy in such matters.

Honorary doctorates are not everyday occurrences at JAMU, not even every year. Just occasional. JAMU is an institution which celebrates only giants – which of course means that I don’t really belong in this company – as you can see, I’m rather on the small side. Among those who have already received honorary doctorates from JAMU are Pierre Boulez, Vaclav Havel, Sir Tom Stoppard and of course my colleague and friend Sir Charles Mackerras. Janaček began to be known in Britain with Mackerras. Of course before him Rosa Newmarch did fi ne pioneering work, but operas are vital for the understanding of Janaček’s greatness, and the history of their performance in Britain begins only in 1951. In that year Kaťa Kabanova was heard for the fi rst time at Sadler’s Wells theatre conducted by Charles Mackerras. It was a fl op. Most of the reviews were negative, audiences tiny. The Glasgow Herald summarized the general reaction: ‘It is doubtful, however, whether [Sadler’s Wells’s] latest operatic venture has been worth all the time, energy and youthful talent expended on it.’ Nevertheless a certain determination was evident from the young conductor even at that time. In spite of little encouragement, Mackerras continued to conduct Kaťa. Although there were productions of other Janaček operas in England at that time – Jenůfa under Kubelik, The Vixen under Colin Davis – Janaček still didn’t fi nd his public in Britain.

The change happened as late as 1964, when Mackerras introduced Th e Makropulos Aff air. Its success was such that the following year he added Janaček’s most demanding opera to the repertory, From the House of the Dead. Th is was a daring action – not only in the choice of opera, but also in the fact that in contrast to all Czech productions so far, Mackerras began to return to Janaček’s original orchestration, eliminating the additions made to the work by others. Taking on From the House of the Dead was an important moment for Mackerras; thereafter he tried as far as possible to get back to Janaček’s original intentions, even if that meant adapting the performing material himself. Th ere followed recordings of fi ve Janaček operas for Decca with the Vienna Philharmonic and Czech singers. In two cases – From the House of the Dead and Jenůfa – the operas were recorded for the fi rst time in authentic versions, i.e. without the changes made by Karel Kovařovic and Osvald Chlubna.

With these recordings, which were distributed all over the world and which made completely clear the qualities of Janaček’s operas, Janaček became indeed a world composer. Recently someone asked me: what is about Janaček has that so attracts the British? At that moment nothing occurred to me. But since then I’ve had a few thoughts. Without Mackerras the Janaček phenomenon certainly wouldn’t have happened in the UK. It needed someone who right from the beginning really knew Janaček’s operas, believed in them and was prepared to dedicate his artistic life to their promotion.

Mackerras did it so splendidly and so conscientiously that after an amazing sixty years Janaček operas are now common in the UK. Secondly, it is perhaps an advantage rather than a disadvantage that the British relationship to opera in the past was never as warm and developed as, for instance, among the Czechs. Of course opera happened in the capital, but it was mostly a snob aff air. When in the 1920s Rosa Newmarch tried to get Jenůfa performed at the Royal Opera House and even found a patron prepared to fi nance it, the opera house went for Turandot rather than Jenůfa. And thirty years later, when Jenůfa’s turn eventually came, under the baton of the then musical director of Covent Garden, Rafael Kubelik, the production was the worst fi nancial disaster in the history of the opera house. Janaček’s operas evidently off ered nothing to great opera stars and their public. The beginnings of the popularity of Janaček’s operas in the UK can be found rather in the humble Sadler’s Wells’ company, whose mission was to bring culture – theatre, ballet and opera – to the wider public. In the case of opera this meant opera not in Italian or in German (as at Covent Garden) but in the vernacular, in English.

It also meant that world singers did not perform there, but decent local artists, capable of putting over not just a musical interpretation but a theatrical one, i.e. ‘singing actors’. It is striking that the fi rst Janaček opera that had greater success in the UK was a musically demanding opera but, in theatrical terms, a very eff ective one, The Makropulos Aff air. Its success in Britain depended not just on the theatrical verve of Karel Čapek’s play, but on superb casting, with Marie Collier at the helm, a singer with huge dramatic talent, a sort of English Maria Callas. Although we don’t have a long English operatic tradition, we have a long and splendid theatrical one: we are after all the nation of Shakespeare and from the 16th century onwards there is a continuous tradition of excellent playwrights and actors and a public that loved going to the theatre. I believe that it was this theatrical element in Janaček which at first attracted the British public. It is one of Janaček’s greatest strengths that he senses musical drama in everything – this is clear from his preoccupation with speech melody and his commentaries on it. Each opera of his is diff erent from its predecessor, each brings something new and original. Compare the world of Janaček operas with the worlds of other great operatic composers of the twentieth century, e.g. Richard Strauss and Puccini, and it is immediately evident how extraordinary Janaček is. And this trajectory continues right up to his last opera, From the House of the Dead, musically and especially dramatically one of the most original operas ever written.

Now, almost eighty years after his death, it is clear that Janaček is one of the greatest operatic dramatists not just of the 20th century, but of all time. It is surely hardly surprising that we value him so. Nor is it surprising that Charles Mackerras dedicated his life to such a giant. Th at I too have been able to devote almost fi fty years of my life to Janaček I regard as a huge privilege and a huge stroke of luck. Thank you for your attention and your patience with my Czechand, as Janaček would have said, ‘Ma ucta!’