This is the 1989 recording of Janaeek's oddest opera, welcomed by me in these pages and now digitally remastered. Whatever is meant by that, there remains a problem with the chorus, raucously recorded and sometimes (for instance at the start of Act 3) with their words inaudible. This is a great pity, as the justly renowned Welsh National Opera Chorus put much into the performance, while Rodney Blumer's translation ingeniously solves the problems of Czech verbal accentuation and helps a plot that needs all the clarity it can get. All sorts of solutions to staging the work have been devised; John Tyrrell has a point when he suggests, in his expert essay, that 'a good recorded performance is probably the ideal way of enjoying some of Janaeek's most incandescent music'.
Those who want a Czech-language performance are probably best with Frantisek Jilek's Supraphon version (with Peter Staka as Zivny and Livia Aghova as Mila), but Philip Langridge and Helen Field are incomparable as the Janaeek-like composer and his mistress. Langridge handles the long Act 1 monologue with such sensitivity to the words, as they lie on Janaeek's subtly inflected melodic lines, as to make them seem the original language, Field responding to him lyrically as she tells how she watched him adoringly and was forced to leave him. And Sir Charles Mackerras wins playing from the orchestra that is indeed incandescent.'