Cesty k autentickej Suchoňovej Krútňave
The Path to Suchoň’s Authentic Krútňava [Whirlpool]

Summary/Abstract: This study is a contribution to the still topical polemic about the authentic version of the Slovak national opera, Eugen Suchoň’s Krútňava [Whirlpool], among the supporters of Suchoň’s original concept and some opera dramaturges and directors who, pointing out the inadequacy of the original version in terms of dramatic effectiveness, still eliminate the composer’s intention to embed this rural story into a dramatic framework. After its première on 10 December 1949, Suchoň was ordered by the communist censure to make changes to his opera: to remove the Christian motifs and the melodramatic framework with the dramatic characters of the Poet and the Double. The composer refused to do so and that is when the troubled fate of the opera began. In its original version, it was re-staged on the occasion of Suchoň’s centenary in 2008 by the State Opera in Banská Bystrica. The Slovak National Theatre sticks to the version without the dramatic framework. The author of this study defends Suchoň’s original version with its own, immanently musical and ideological, concept and logic.

• Details
• Contents