捷克国宝艺术家、故乡之子雅纳切克的大庆典

文：司马勤（Ken Smith） 编译：李正欣

我至今还在为10月在北京看到的一个节目而感到困惑。由北京国际音乐节与阿姆斯特丹话剧团、比利时透明歌剧院（Muziektheater Transparant）等多家机构联合制作、由曾获托尼奖的导演伊沃·冯·霍夫（Ivo van Hove）执导的《消失人的日记》（

The Diary of One who Disappeared

），这是根据莱奥什·雅纳切克（Leoš Janáček）同名声乐组曲所改编的舞台演出。说实话，“舞台演出”这个字眼从戏剧文学的角度来看不太恰当。冯·霍夫在组曲的22首歌曲之间（原作是谱写给男高音、女低音与三重唱的不凡之作）穿插了多封作曲家亲自撰写的书信。要知道，组曲的歌词（雅纳切克最早从布拉格的报刊中读到的）围绕着乡村男孩狂恋吉卜赛女郎的情结。当时，作曲家正迷恋着比他年轻40岁的卡米拉·斯特丝洛娃（Kamila Stösslová），这位女士就是启发雅纳切克创作《卡佳·卡巴诺娃》（

Katya Kabanova

）、《 狡 猾 的 小 狐 狸 》（

The Cunning Little Vixen

）与《马克罗普洛斯档案》（

The Makropulos Case

）中女主角形象的灵感泉源。原作中的乡村男孩甚至名为“雅涅切克”（Janiček）。你大概能猜得到作曲家的心思吧。

冯·霍夫安排一位男演员诵读作曲家的书信，随后一位男高音（他穿的衣服与男演员很相似）唱出一系列与书信中的情感如出一辙的歌曲。一位女中音代表了斯特丝洛娃与吉卜赛女郎。在一个段落里，两位男士（男演员与男高音）将他们的爱慕与痴迷形象化：两人一起筛选心目中“缪斯女神”的照片，更把它们投影放大到墙上，以此来取舍要把哪一张冲印出来。

从视觉上看，舞台画面很有说服力，尽管叙事方面令人一头雾水。这也是问题所在：我观赏过雅纳切克的歌剧、阅读过雅纳切克的传记，甚至看过他的情书（顺便说一下，斯特丝洛娃并不怎么回信），但有一半时间还是搞不清楚舞台上的来龙去脉。我不禁同情起当晚在北京看演出的观众们来：在中国，雅纳切克的歌剧并没有什么机会亮相，除了最近那次删节过的浸没式《小狐狸》（同样也是北京国际音乐节上呈献的制作）。

学者保罗·温菲尔德（Paul Wingfield）在评论雅纳切克夫人兹登卡（Zdenka）那本忧伤的回忆录时，提醒我们不应强行将主人公的生平与音乐挂上钩，或是单凭音乐来追溯现实生活经历。很明显，冯·霍夫没有接触过这一提示；但从另一方面来看，冯·霍夫也从来没有说他的《消失人的日记》与作曲家的生平有什么关系。那只不过是一位艺术家对另一位艺术家的回应——雅纳切克也正是为了回应报刊上的文字而谱写出《消失人的日记》组曲。观众需要在演出中细细琢磨，才可得出自己的结论。可坦白地说，这种要求对不同的观众来说是不公平的。

布鲁诺国家歌剧院举办的第六届国际歌剧与音乐节上，《浪漫的开端》剧照

＊＊＊

几周后，我重回雅纳切克的故乡布鲁诺。去年我首次造访这个城市，却只逗留了一天——更准确地说，我只在那里待了一晚——为的是观看罗伯特·卡尔森（Robert Carsen）执导的《卡佳·卡巴诺娃》。演出过后，我被作曲家能把本地文化根源发挥得淋漓尽致、缔造出令人惊讶的音乐艺术的才华所深深吸引。

那次的全部经历驱使我开始探索雅纳切克毕生的作品目录。很多作曲家的晚期作品都会被追捧，雅纳切克也不例外，而他年轻时代的作品，无论是任何形式的演出或录音，都很难能找到。雅纳切克最初的两部歌剧都各只有一套录音。他毕生的第二部歌剧——《浪漫的开端》（

The Beginning of a Romance

）——只有一幕，唯一的录音早已绝版，而该黑胶唱片的网上零售价如今已飙升至200多美元。歌剧的时长才不过40来分钟，因此平均一分钟音乐的价格高达5美元。

吸引我重返这个富有魅力的捷克城市的原因，正是布鲁诺国家歌剧院举办的第六届国际歌剧与音乐节，本年度的主题是“雅纳切克·布鲁诺·2018”。今年是捷克共和国（解体之前是捷克斯洛伐克社会主义共和国）建国一百周年，顺理成章地，布鲁诺国家歌剧院今年节目安排的主线是雅纳切克的全部歌剧剧目。演出单位除了本地团体，还有来自欧洲其他国家的院团。

虽然歌剧节没有把全套作品按创作年代依次呈现——开幕演出是布鲁诺国家歌剧院自家的《狡猾的小狐狸》新制作，这部歌剧算是雅纳切克的中期作品——但整体的日程编排上别出心裁，从作曲家的早期作品慢慢延伸至后期，还加入了几场室内乐与管弦乐团音乐会。除了雅纳切克作品以外，还有他的前辈甚至今天雅纳切克音乐学院后辈的作品，充分表现出这位大师的影响和传承。

我离开布鲁诺几天之后，冯·霍夫的《消失人的日记》亮相该歌剧节。我相信在布鲁诺的演出效果肯定会跟北京的完全不同。这部制作会让中国观众感到迷惑，但因为布鲁诺的生活氛围就如此，所以那里的观众会更容易理解每一个细微的差别。

＊＊＊

上面说到冯·霍夫忽视温菲尔德“不要把雅纳切克的艺术与生平混为一谈”的警告，在布鲁诺似乎也没人理会这一点。拉开歌剧节帷幕的《狡猾的小狐狸》由布鲁诺国家歌剧院艺术总监谢里·赫尔曼（Jiří Heřman）执导，故事完全基于这样一个事实：鲁道夫 ·特斯诺里德克（Rudolf Těsnohlídek）——在布鲁诺报纸上发表《小狐狸》故事的原作者——他曾照顾一个被遗弃的儿童，后来更号召社会各界筹办儿童福利院。

多样歌剧院在两天之内演出了雅纳切克首部歌剧《萨尔卡》的两个不同版本，音乐会版（左）与舞台版（右）

回想起来，这个史实让我更欣赏去年在北京国际音乐节搬演的、寂静歌剧团制作的，意味深长的《小狐狸》。《小狐狸》里并没有狐狸——只有猎人遇上的、流浪街头的、有着狐狸文身的女童，带她回家后妻子不悦，儿子更以虐待她为乐。

与之相比，赫尔曼的《狡猾的小狐狸》的处理手法不那么具有对抗性，但效果更加细腻：儿童福利院举办一场演出，参与表演的孩子们都站在布袋玩偶后面。歌剧与戏剧演出的界限变得越来越模糊，与文学顾问帕特里斯·查斯特科娃（Patricie Částková）撰写的介绍文章中提出的“是真实，还是童话？”相得益彰。

我们也应该探究雅纳切克与捷克民族主义的关系。《狡猾的小狐狸》的音乐应该让每一个捷克人都引以为豪，但是它与捷克建国百周年有没有直接关系，就不太清楚了（尽管选择今年做这个制作肯定比较容易获得政府资助）。对于布鲁诺这个城市与民众来说，赫尔曼的制作毫无疑问与他们息息相关。

第二天晚上，歌剧节安排了一场民族音乐演出——展示雅纳切克音乐世界中不同文化传统的混合性，包括摩拉维亚、波希米亚、斯洛文尼亚以及其他的民间音乐。有些作品的真实性值得怀疑，但我猜测策划人是故意这样编排，因为整体的效果，让我们领略到雅纳切克的民族音乐田野考察既明确了他的民族主义根源，又帮助塑造了他后来的现代主义风格。

以上两种意识形态之间的空隙为多样歌剧团（Opera Diversa）提供了艺术土壤。这个当地的小型歌剧团，在两天之内演出了雅纳切克首部歌剧《萨尔卡》（

Šárka

）的两个不同版本。《萨尔卡》不能算是作曲家少年时期的作品，雅纳切克当时已经30多岁了，但从风格上来说，这的确是个转折点。《萨尔卡》原本的钢琴版本（由于作曲家与编剧意见不合，该剧创作后数十年都没有公演）很大程度上受制于斯美塔那的民族主义音乐（斯美塔那在《我的祖国》这部交响诗里，同样把波希米亚神话中的女武士当作题材）。但是雅纳切克的修订与配器版，终于在作品完成20年后由他的学生奥斯瓦尔德·赫卢布纳（Osvald Chiubna）经过最后润色加工后搬上舞台——只包含他原作音乐的大约三分之一，而风格上似乎吸收了雅纳切克后期的、更成功作品中的元素。

如果说加布里埃拉·塔多诺娃（Gabriela Tardonová）的导演手法为波希米亚神话穿上完全现代的服装（演员阵容与前一晚的钢琴伴奏音乐会版一模一样），那么这部作品的重新配器为观众提供了更广阔的现代主义视角。作曲家安德里·凯斯（Ondřej Kyas）把雅纳切克铿锵的音域压缩为高音域的弦乐（小提琴、中提琴）与弹拨乐器（竖琴、吉他），配上宽广音域的木管铜管，令我联想到库尔特·魏尔（Kurt Weill）当年前卫的乐队加上路易·安德里森（Louis Andriessen）的配器手法。

相比之下，第二天晚上的《浪漫的开端》似乎从民俗性来说退了一步，这也许可以解释该作品在舞台上为何如此罕见。或许是因为它剧情的简单扼要——女孩遇见了英俊的贵族飞行员，忘记了她从前的农家情人；也或者是因为作曲家发现自己在第三部歌剧《耶奴发》（

Jenůfa

）中也有类似的情节，并试图掩盖自己年轻时的缺点。布鲁诺音乐学院这一次的演出表明，这部只有45分钟的作品很难找到合适的“下半场”剧目，这也可能是鲜少被制作的原因。导演克里斯蒂安娜·贝尔克雷迪（Kristiana Belcredi）将雅纳切克这部罕有上演的歌剧与作曲家更罕见的芭蕾舞剧《拉科斯·拉科齐》（

Rákos Rákoczy

）配在一起。他抛弃了芭蕾舞剧的原创情节，以一个与歌剧情节相呼应的故事取代，顺利地连通了两部艺术作品。

这两个“寻求爱情和寻找自我的年轻女性”的故事不仅在叙述上，而且在题材上都很相似，很容易将它们联系在一起，此外这两部作品中都编排有民间歌舞的情节。基本上，雅纳切克不断地咀嚼那些原始的素材，直到第三部歌剧《耶奴发》中，民间元素才被完全消化。

歌剧节暂且跳过了大名鼎鼎的《耶奴发》——阿尔维斯·哈曼尼斯（Alvis Harmanis）为波兰国家歌剧院的制作一周后才登台——直接上演了《命运》（

Destiny

）。如果说有什么区别的话，摩拉维亚-西里西亚剧院的制作证明，虽然《耶奴发》的音乐成就无与伦比，但作曲家接着的那部《命运》在实际掌控戏剧方面却一团糟。

首先，《命运》是一个错综复杂的故事：一个作曲家写了一部关于一个不忠诚的情人的歌剧，发现自己真正的情人（和灵感泉源）其实一直都很忠诚。两人团聚不久她又悲惨地去世。多年后，歌剧终于上演，他已经把剧中关于女人不忠的部分删除了。演员们意识到歌剧的缘由后，催促作曲家把结局写完，但是作曲家在作品未完成之前不幸去世。

布鲁诺国家歌剧院艺术总监谢里·赫尔曼

雅纳切克如此大胆的剧情几乎迸发出了后现代主义的自我意识，不过也同样存在将所有情节捆绑在一起的僵局。制作更有演员人选的问题要考虑。《命运》需要近25名独唱演员，通常每人只唱几句，许多人更演唱不止一个角色。今天唯一能真正搬演这部作品的，就是类似摩拉维亚-西里西亚这样规模的剧院，院内已经有众多独唱演员。

但从观众的角度来看，就算是谢里·涅科夫斯尔（Jiři Nekvsil）如此精简的制作，也在表述清楚故事上出现了一些问题。尽管我手上有一本节目册，但我仍常常弄不清是哪位表演者在唱哪个角色。过了一会儿，你不得不放弃，只得任由音乐按照自己的逻辑进行下去。

最终，那就是在作曲家近在咫尺的城镇观赏其多部早期作品所得出的结论。雅纳切克的后期作品经历了漫长而缓慢的过程才为国际所熟知，但在这整整一周的时间里，我在布鲁诺时时刻刻都被提醒着，他来自哪里。

I’m still puzzling over a show I saw in Beijing last October. The Beijing Music Festival had co-produced(with Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the Belgian company Muziektheater Transparent and several other partners)a staging of Leoš Janáček’s song cycle

The Diary of One who Disappeared

by the Tony Award-winning director Ivo van Hove. Actually, “staging” is rather a dramaturgical understatement. Van Hove intersperses the cycle’s 22 songs (for a rare combination of tenor, alto and vocal trio)with many of the composer’s own letters.You see, the texts of the songs (which Janáček first read in a Prague newspaper) are all about a village boy’s mad love for a gypsy girl. Janáček at the time was obsessed with Kamila Stösslová, a woman 40 years his junior (and the inspiration for the title characters of

Katya Kabanova

,

The Cunning Little Vixen

and

The Makropulos Case

). The village boy in the original poems was even named “Janiček.” You can probably see where this is going.

Van Hove has an actor read from the composer’s letters, followed by a tenor (dressed much like the actor) performing songs falling into the same emotional state. A mezzo-soprano vaguely represents both Stösslová and the gypsy girl. At one point,both the actor and tenor, expressing their creative obsession in visual terms, sift through photographs of their muse—projected in striking detail—trying to decide which one to print.

多样歌剧院制作的《萨尔卡》

Visually, it was all rather compelling, despite its narrative being practically impenetrable. Here’s the thing: I’ve seen the operas, read Janáček’s biography,perused his love letters (Stösslová didn’t write back much, by the way), and still I didn't know what was going on half the time. Think of the poor people from Beijing, where the only Janáček opera ever performed has been an abridged, theatrically immersive version of

Vixen

(again, at the Beijing Music Festival).

The scholar Paul Wingfield, in reviewing the rather unhappy memoirs of Janáček’s wife Zdenka, warns against either connecting biography with music or using music to trace biography. Clearly, that message never got to van Hove; but then again, his show never claims to be biography. It’s merely one artist responding to another, much as Janáček did with his own source materials. Audience members need to sift through the pieces themselves and reach their own conclusions. But frankly, not all audiences are created equal.

＊＊＊

A few weeks later I found myself once again in Brno,Janáček’s hometown. Last time, it was only a day trip—or rather, an overnight—to see Robert Carsen’s production of

Katya Kabanova

, but by the time I left I’d become rather smitten by the composer’s ability to spin vernacular sources into spectacular art.The whole experience had sent me in search of as much of Janáček’s music as I could find. Like most composers, his later works are held in highest regard, the youthful works difficult to encounter in any form.His first two operas have only one recording each; his second, the one-act

Beginning of a Romance

, has been long out of print and, priced at more than US$200 on internet sites, cost essentially US$5 per minute.

So what brought me back to this charming Czech town was the National Theatre Brno’s 6International Opera and Music Festival, dubbed “Janáček Brno 2018.” in honor of the 100anniversary of founding of the Czech Republic, the company devoted its programming to presenting all of Janáček’s operas in a mix of local and international productions.

Though not technically a cycle—the festival opened out of sequence with the National Theatre’s own production of

The Cunning Little Vixen

—the program order did generally move from the composer’s early works to his later ones, with a few chamber music and orchestral concerts thrown in. Musical offerings also included a few of Janáček’s predecessors as well as some newly composed works by students at the Janáček Academy, presumably taking the pulse of the master’s legacy.A few days after I left, the festival even presented van Hove’s

Diary of One who Disappeared

, which surely would’ve been a completely different experience from the performance in Beijing. Where Chinese befuddlement was plainly palpable in the theatre, people in Brno would’ve understood every single nuance.

＊＊＊

It’s one thing for van Hove to ignore warnings about mixing Janáček’s art and life, but no one in Brno seemed to have gotten Wingfield’s memo either. The opening

Vixen

, created by National Theatre artistic director Jiří Heřman, was based entirely around the fact that Rudolf Těsnohlídek, the author of the

Vixen

stories originally published in a Brno newspaper,had once befriended an abandoned child and later spearheaded a local home for forsaken youths.

《浪漫的开端》（上）和芭蕾舞剧《拉科斯·拉科齐》（下）组成了一整晚的演出

In retrospect, that revelation gave entirely new weight to Silent Opera’s immersive production

Vixen

at last year’s Beijing Music Festival, where there was no “vixen” at all—simply a hunter who finds a street urchin (with a vixen tattoo) and brings her to his home,to the consternation of his wife and the perverse entertainment of his kids.

Heřman’s production is less confrontational, yet far more intricate: The young residents of a children’s home participate in a small pageant, where humans wear masks and stand behind stuffed animals. Lines blur between the opera and its performance, entirely befitting a program essay by dramaturge Patricie Částková asking, “Is it real, or is it a fairy tale?”

One could ask a similar question regarding Janáček’s relationship to Czech nationalism.

Vixen

has music that should make any Czech eminently proud,but its connection to the Czech centenary (applications for government funding notwithstanding) is still a bit hazy. How connected Heřman’s production was to the people and heritage of Brno, on the other hand, was simply beyond dispute.

The next night, the festival took a slight detour into a mix of Moravian, Bohemian, Silesian and other folk styles that formed the cultural mélange of Janáček’s sound world. Some were of dubious authenticity,but that seemed precisely the point, since the cumulative effect was to show how the sonic brew of Janáček’s ethnomusicalogical fieldwork both defined his nationalistic roots and helped to shape his later modernist style.

The space between those two “isms” became a playground for Opera Diversa, a small but intrepid company that performed two contrasting versions of Janáček’s first opera. One hesitates to call

Šárka

juvenilia, since the composer was in his mid-30s, but stylistically it marks a major gearshift.

Šárka

’s original piano version (unperformed for decades due to a conflict with the librettist) is very much beholden to the nationalism of Bedřich Smetana (who, after all, had musicalized his own account of Bohemia’s mythical woman warrior as one of the tone-poems in

Má vlast

). But Janáček’s revised version—first staged 20 years later with final touches added by his pupil Osvald Chlubna—contained only about 30 percent of his original music, with orchestration that clearly pointed the way to his more accomplished operas.

If Gabriela Tardonová’s staging (using the same cast and chorus as the concert performance of the piano score the night before) clad Bohemian myth in thoroughly modern dress, the production’s reorchestration offered a broader modernist perspective. By compressing Janáček’s sonorous breadth into high bowed strings (violin and viola),plucked strings (harp and guitar) an a full range of winds and brass, composer Ondřej Kyas fashioned forward-looking forces resembling a Kurt Weill pit band as scored by Louis Andriessen.

By comparison,

The Beginning of a Romance

the next evening seemed something of a folkloric regression,which may explain its infrequency on stage. Or the rarity may be due to its sketchy synopsis—girl meets dashing aristocratic test pilot and forgets her former peasant beau—or perhaps to the composer figuring out was he was doing in his next opera,

Jenůfa

, and deciding to bury his youthful transgressions.The offering by the Brno Conservatory suggests that the opera’s scarcity of productions is partly because the 45-minute piece simply lacks a suitable companion. Pairing Janáček’s rare opera with the even rarer

Rákos Rákoczy

, his only ballet, director Kristiana Belcredi smoothly bridged the two art forms—partly by dumping the ballet’s original scenario and replacing it with a story echoing that of the opera.The two “young-women-looking-for-love-andfinding-themselves” stories linked not just the narratives but also their stylistic similarities, weaving folk singing and dancing in both works throughout the evening.Ultimately, though, this was still Janáček chewing his source material. The folk element wouldn't become fully digested until

Jenůfa

.The festival, for the time being, skipped

Jenůfa

(which appeared later, in Alvis Harmanis’s production for the Polish National Opera) and moved directly to

Destiny

. If anything, the production by the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre proved that

Jenůfa

’s unqualified musical success was no guarantee of mastering practical dramatic concerns.

Destiny

has, first of all, a convoluted story: A composer who has written an opera about an unfaithful lover finds that his real lover (and inspiration) had not been unfaithful at all. Years after they reunite(and she has tragically died) his opera finally reaches production and he begins removing parts about the woman’s infidelity. The cast, having realized the opera’s inspirations, pushes the composer for his ending, but he too dies before the opera is completed.

Janáček’s bold premise, bursting with protopostmodern self-reference, never quite ties all its strands together. Then there’s also the cast to consider: Some 25 performers, often singing roles of only a few lines, many singing more than one role.The only company capable of putting on a production today would be one like the Moravian-Silesian Theatre,with a ready roster of singers on hand.

From the audience’s perspective, even Jiří Nekvsil’s fairly streamlined production had problems getting the story across clearly. Despite having a program book in hand, I often had no idea which performer was singing which role. After a while, you just had to sit back and hear the music unfold on its own terms.

And that, ultimately, was the take-home message of the festival, where so many of the composer’s works were performed in such a short time, in the town where they were originally written. Janáček’s later works have endured a long, slow climb into the international repertory, but for several days audiences were constantly reminded exactly where he came from.

摩拉维亚-西里西亚剧院制作的《命运》剧照