The Diary of One Who Vanished

Notes on the Program

by Steven Blier

The Diary of One who Vanished holds a unique place in the art song repertoire. It is equally a song cycle, a dramatic monologue, and a chamber opera. It tells the story of a young farmer’s fascination with a gypsy girl, Zefka, whom he has seen lurking on the outskirts of his property. This woman begins to haunt his thoughts and dreams, and he finally seizes on a pretext to approach her. The gypsy makes a brief vocal appearance in increasing passion of their encounter, which is climaxed not in song but in a powerful, often violent piano solo. The rest of the drama hinges on the youth’s abandoning himself to his obsession with the gypsy, and his parting from his family to join Zefka and their newborn son. The piece is divided into twenty-two sections, with the piano solo exactly at the half-way point.

This work shares many themes with Janácek’s operas. The sexual obsession and guilt recall Katya Kabanova and Jenufa, where the power of erotic love is juxtaposed to the confines of bourgeois life and its notions of propriety. Janácek’s heroes and heroines long for escape. The prisoners in The House of the Dead, Elena Makropolos who is trapped by her own immortality, and even the comic Mr. Broucek who dreams of escaping to the moons to avoid the grind of everyday life, all seek their own transcendence, to soar into their own vision of freedom. And their yearning often amounts to an idée fixe, which can be either an affirmation of the life force, or, when thwarted, a vortex towards suicide.

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