{"content":"\n
\n \n About work:

In the mini-opera Suzanna the Orphan, one of the works dating from his extremely prolific compositional period, Jozef Grešák decided to put to music impressive, poetical text of the famous ballad by P. O. Hviezdoslav. It was a tremendously lucky choice from dramaturgic aspect, since this gem of the classic Slovak poetry represents an ideal base for an opera. The situation is sufficiently accentuated, its epic and narrative planes abound in gradated tension and tend to dramatic culmination. The text presents a clear cut, ethic idea and is almost tempting structurally to by employed as an operatic libretto. Grešák had been long preparing to put Hviezdoslav’s ballad to music and he did so, as a mature composer, without any second intentions to dazzle the audience by useless novelties. On the contrary, he strictly and consequently followed the text and its ideational charge. The work was framed by organ solo prelude and postlude (in the recent version these passages are played by orchestra). The composer scored the opera for five singers, but the vocal part can be executed by one singer only. The instrumentation of the work is rather sober and transparent. Naturally, the solo vocal part is the most important; its melodiousness is based similarly, as that of Janáček, on the intonation of speech, but highly effective and vocally harmonizing with the development of the balladic story. The small intervals, the melody of the opera is composed in, help to raise the tension of the situation. Only in some extremely tense passages the vocal line rears up together with the whole flow of music, but suddenly it returns at the subdued dynamic level, so characteristic of the work. Te musical expression of Susanna’s wail at her mother’s grave (according to the author a sort of anti-lullaby) is perhaps the most impressive part of the composition. In this passage, Grešák employed the inexhaustible well of Slovak folk wailings . It is a passage of genuinely tonal nature but still expressed by modern means of expression, which will remain for long in the minds of the audience.


\n (Ivan Marton, in: foreword to the score. Bratislava : Opus, 1978.)
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\n Movements:
\n\n Prelude\n \n
\n\n Story of Susanna\n \n
\n\n Postlude\n \n
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First performance in Slovakia

\n \n \n 16.01.1975,\n Bratislava,\n SK\n\n
Performers: Alžbeta Režuchová Mrázová (s), Ferdinand Klinda (org), Slovak Philharmonic, Bystrík Režucha (dir.)\n
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