General information
Title CZOkna do mlhy
Title ENWindows into the Mist
Title DEFenster in den Nebel
Title FRFenêtres dans le brouillard
CategoryStage Works and Film Music
SubcategoryOperas
Halbreich number124ter
Origin
Initiation of composition1920
First performance
Autograph deposition
Note on the autograph depostitionOnly a fragment of the draft (private owner, Vienna) and an autograph libretto (Bohuslav Martinů Centre)
Copyright
Note on copyrightCopyright free
First edition
Note on first editionNot published
Sources
References Related writings
Related images
Documents in the Library
About the composition

In letters from the 1920s to the Czech literary historian, theatre critic and poet Otokar Fischer, Martinů discuss the novel Okna do mlhy (Windows into the Mist) by the Czech prose writer and journalist Jan Havlasa, whom Martinů had asked directly for permission to use this story as the basis for an opera libretto. The papers from Havlasa’s estate include a printed copy of four stories published under the collective title Four Japanese Tales. Martinů apparently received the third of them, called ‘The Darling of the Gods’, with a girl heroine named O-Take-San, for musical treatment some time before he and the writer agreed on use of a different Japanese story of his for an opera, namely Okna do mlhy. Martinů treated Havlasa’s work freely, keeping only the names of the main heroes O-gin-san and Genzhiro in this story of unhappy love, and two important sites of the action–The Maidens’ Mountains and Yoshiwara. In his letter to Fischer, he describes the opera's plot, divided into three acts, and the individual scene changes. The composition was never published.

Kateřina Maýrová, „The Unfinished Stage Works of Bohuslav Martinů“, Prague: The Czech Museum of Music – The National Museum.

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