Santa Barbara: The Cunning Little Vixen

One of the four operas presented this season at Opera Santa Barbara, California, is Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen. The new production by Crystal Manich, which is dedicated to both adult and children spectators (which is also one of the reasons why it is sung in an English), received two performances – on 3rd and 5th March at … Read more

Hong Kong resonated with the music of Janáček and Dvořák

One of the ensembles performing at the 45th year of the prestigious international Hong Kong Arts festival (Feb 16 – Mar 18) was the ensemble of the National Theatre Brno. HK Cultural Centre’s Concert Hall, which can host nearly 1,600 visitors, saw them perform four times altogether – twice it was Janáček’s opera The Makropulos Case, then his Sinfonietta, Eternal … Read more

Seattle: Katya Kabanova

On 25th February, Seattle Opera in Washington, USA, premiered a new production of Leoš Janáček’s Katya Kabanova. The Australian director Patrick Nolan, debutant at this opera house, did not set the story into the tsarist Russia, but into a small American town in the 50s. The heroine is thus presented as a modern woman rebelling against the patriarchal environment … Read more

Seattle: Katya Kabanova

On 25th February, Seattle Opera in Washington, USA, premiered a new production of Leoš Janáček’s Katya Kabanova. The Australian director Patrick Nolan, debutant at this opera house, did not set the story into the tsarist Russia, but into a small American town in the 50s. The heroine is thus presented as a modern woman rebelling against the patriarchal environment … Read more

Šimon Voseček. Biedermann and the Arsonists (German premiere)

After Vienna and London, the acclaimed all-evening opera Biedermann and the Arsonists (2005-2007) by a Czech-Austrian composer Šimon Voseček received its German premiere, too. It was produced in Stadttheater Bremerhaven in northern Germany by director Christian van Götz and conductor Thomas Kalb. Based on Max Frisch’s absurd drama of the same name (1958), the opera tells how … Read more

Coburg: The Cunning Little Vixen in a world of child prostitution

On 4th February, Landestheater Coburg, Bavaria, presented a new, radical production of Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen. The Hungarian director duo Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka, who are also responsible for the scenography and costumes, completely abandoned the animal realm and set the story into the world of child prostitution in Eastern Europe. Cages holding underage girls prisoner … Read more

Rusalka at the Metropolitan Opera

Premiered on 2nd February, the historically second production of Dvořák’s Rusalka at the Metropolitan Opera in New York meets with very mixed reactions. The critics cannot seem to agree in their opinion both on Mary Zimmerman’s direction and the singers’ performance. Who gets mostly enthusiastic reactions is the American mezzosoprano Jamie Barton in the role of Ježibaba; some, … Read more

Saarbrücken: Katja Kabanowa

Saarländisches Staatstheater in Saarbrücken, the capital of the state of Saarland, Germany, opened its 2017 opera season with a premiere of Janáček’s Katja Kabanowa. Written in 1921 and based on A. N. Ostrovsky’s play The Storm, the opera got performed here for the first time in history. The premiere took place on January 14. The director Ben Baur set … Read more

Vienna. Viktor Ullmann: Emperor of Atlantis

Thirty years since the last performance, Viktor Ullmann’s Emperor of Atlantis returned onto the stage of the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. The new production of this one-act opera, composed in 1943 in the Theresienstadt ghetto, was premiered on 11 January on the Kammeroper scene. The director is Rainer Vierlinger, the theatre’s long-standing collaborator for whom … Read more

Erfurt: The Bartered Bride

On 17th December, Theater Erfurt (Thuringia, Germany) presented a new production of Bedřich Smetana’s Bartered Bride. It was conducted by the theatre’s second kapellmeister, Greek conductor Zoi Tsokanou. Rather than to experiment, director Markus Weckesser chose to set the story, very traditionally, into a Bohemian village, the atmosphere of which is enhanced by the realist scenography and costumes. The central pair … Read more