The owner of one of the most eccentric careers in Western music history, Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) was one of the greatest opera composers of the 20th century. Most of his early career was spent researching folk music in Moravia, where he was born, and other Slavic parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He didn’t gain fame as a composer until he was 50, when he debuted his tragic opera Jenůfa. From that point, he turned out a succession of operatic masterpieces such as The Cunning Little Vixen, Káťa Kabanová, and From the House of the Dead, which are marked with ecstatic harmonies and a deep understanding of the rhythms of the Czech language. Among his other great works are the Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass, which is set to religious texts in Church Slavonic. Along with Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana, he is considered among the greatest Czech composers.