What a difference 100 years makes.

When Leoš Janáček finished his opera Jenůfa in 1903, he sent it to National Theater Director Gustav Schmoranz, who promptly rejected it. "For our sake and for yours we would like your work to be fully successful on the stage, but we fear that it would not be so," Schmoranz wrote back.

Jenůfa is now an acclaimed masterpiece of the world opera stage, and a fitting first premiere for the National Theater's 2005–06 season. But respect is still hard to come by, as the Sept. 11 premiere was preceded by an ill-timed tribute to Alex Juan, the departing general director of Komerčni banka and a generous patron of the theater. The audience was forced to sit through a half-hour of tribute speeches and an obsequious children's chorus number — no doubt well-deserved accolades, but highly inappropriate at that particular moment.

Finally the opera began, in a burst of stage smoke and shadows cast by spinning wheels, immediately ensnaring the characters in the terrible gears of fate. Based on an eponymous 1890 play by Czech playwright Gabriela Preissová, Jenůfa tells a simple but powerful story of infanticide in a village beset by strict social mores and moral ambiguity. The central character is Jenůfa's stepmother Kostelnička, whose certainty in her godlike authority leads to the stunning tragedy.

Jenůfa is one of those rare operas that never feels contrived or artificial; there are no set pieces or choral productions obviously inserted to show off singers' voices or the composer's range. The dramatic unity of the play works in perfect accompaniment to Janáček's naturalist score, which sets a gripping, suspenseful tone from the opening notes and never lets up. In particular, the second act is a seamless marriage of music and drama, with the anguished emotions onstage mirrored and magnified with devastating precision in the score.

The material is so powerful that very little is needed in the way of sets and costumes. In fact, the starker the stage, the better. For the most part, this production employs that approach with good results. But National Theater productions can never resist some measure of theatrical flamboyance, and this one concludes with a sudden spurt of staging gimmicks, as if to make up for the restraint of the first two acts. It's unfortunate, as they detract from what should be a somber and dignified ending.

The singing runs in the opposite direction — weak at the start, picking up in quality and power when Kostelnička finally appears on stage, and finishing comparatively strong. On opening night, Finnish tenor Jorma Silvasti was a creditable Laca, but the clear standout was National Theater regular Yvona Škvárová as Kostelnička, who dominated the stage. (Eva Urbanová will alternate with Škvárová in future performances.) Conductor Jiří Kout did a fine job with the house orchestra, which sounded very sharp.

Some of the wrinkles of opening night will no doubt smooth out over time, and with any luck the singing will improve as well. But whether the production will gain any emotional impact remains an open question. Some local opera-goers felt the National Theater set the standard for reducing the audience to tears with its 1997 production of Jenůfa. This one doesn't have nearly the same gravitas — or at least didn't on opening night.