Janáček's "Slovenian" pupil Emerik Beran wrote his only opera, which he entitled Melusina, in Brno in 1896. Although the opera was conceived abroad by the Czech composer, who lived most of his life ...in Slovenia, it certainly deserves a more detailed musical, historical and analytical discussion. In spite of its extremely interesting libretto and surprisingly advanced orchestration, at least for the then prevailing circumstances in Slovenia, Beran's opera unfortunately still lies buried in the musical archive of the University Library in Maribor, waiting for its world premiere.
Among the twenty-one preserved letters from Janáček to Beran, written during 1890 and 1928 in Czech, eight of Janáček’s letters and eight of Janáček’s postcards have been preserved, in addition to ...five official letters written during Beran’s pedagogical work at the Organ School in Brno. Among twenty-one of Beran’s letters to Janáček, written during 1914 and 1928 also in Czech, we can find eight of Beran’s letters and thirteen of Beran’s postcards, where in three of them, the place or time are not exactly given.
Bohemia and Moravia were sending their musically talented sons into the world for nearly three hundred years thereby earning the title of Europe's conservatorium. A wave of Czech musicians also ...reached Slovenia in the second half of the 19th century, where they decisively contributed to the growth of the young Slovene musical culture as composers, music performers and music pedagogues and thereby, to the passage from the musically-inspired dilettantism into a gradual high quality and quantity increase in the musical work in Slovenia. One of the latter is certainly Emerik Beran, who maintained close and friendly contacts with his former professor at the Brno Organ School, Leoš Janáček, through letters of correspondence of a private nature, even after moving from his birth town Brno in Moravia to Maribor in Slovenia in 1898. The correspondence between Janáček and Beran gives us valuable insight into their musical ambitions, relations to other colleagues, the functioning of musical institutions and the cultural and political climate of those times. Janáček and Beran maintained very good relations throughout their letter-exchange period (from 1890 to 1928) and their correspondence provides evidence of several instances of mutual generosity as they helped each other in their careers.
Emerik Beran je svojo prvo in edino opero z naslovom Melusina napisal leta 1896 v Brnu na Moravskem. Čeprav je opera nastala na tujem in je delo češkega skladatelja, ki je večino svojega življenja ...preživel na Slovenskem, si Beranova Melusina vsekakor zasluži bolj podrobne glasbeno-zgodovinske in analitične obravnave. Opera namreč še vedno pozabljena in neuprizorjena leži v glasbenem arhivu Univerzitetne knjižnice v Mariboru.
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