The Slave, A Preliminary Study On The Opera

Leos Janácek (1854-1928) is another eximious Czechic nationalism composer after Smetana and Dvorak. He composed on various types of music, and opera played an important role in all his compositions. The opera Jenufa, discussed in this article, is the third opera in his repertoire, which is a mature work showing his personality.This article is divided into the following four parts: (1) brief introduction of the composer's life and his composition, (2) the whole course of composing Jenufa and the synopsis, (3) analyzing the opera Jenufa, (4) the conclusion. The first part is an introduction of his growing and social experience, as well as summaries of his periodic masterpieces and their brief styles. The second part is the reason why he composed this work and related personal experience at that time. Brief content of the opera is also presented in this part. The third part is the analysis of this opera, which is the central part of this article. In the section "the analysis of the opera's content, the characters depicting and the structure characteristic", the author systematically analyses the polished content, the vivid plot of the main characters, the comparison of different personalities and the unstopped music structure. The section "the opera's music characteristics", talks about the methods of music expression, such as melody, rhythm, harmony and orchestration, especially the application of the "speech melody". The last part is the conclusion, which shows the perfect fusion of the realism and nationalism in the opera Jenufa and contribution to the Czechic opera.