Leoš Janáček

Born in Hukvaldy in 1854, Janáček studied in Brno, Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna before settling back in Brno, where he married his pupil Zdenka Schulzová and buried himself in folkloristic research. His early work shadowed Dvořák, but around the turn of the century he began weaving in his transcriptions of spoken "speech melodies" and Slavic folk material into something new. The death of his daughter Olga in 1903 reshaped his output; the opera Jenůfa premiered in Brno the following year. Prague ignored him for over a decade, until a revised Jenůfa at the National Theatre in 1916 finally opened the door. His late works - Káťa Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen, the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass, Taras Bulba, two string quartets - were shaped by Russian and Czech literature, pan-Slavist politics, and an infatuation with Kamila Stösslová. He died in 1928; conductor Charles Mackerras later championed the operas worldwide and restored some scores to their original forms.