9th International Opera and Music Festival Janáček Brno 2024
The 9th International Opera and Music Festival Janáček Brno 2024 is to open with a new production of The Excursions of Mr Brouček. The premiere is to be held at the Janáček Theatre on 1 November 2024. The performance on 4 December 2024 is to be filmed by Czech Television, broadcast on a live stream over the platform OperaVision and recorded for Czech Radio.
The theme of the opera The Excursions of Mr Brouček has become the inspiration for the motto of this year’s festival – Without Borders! “The new festival production is coming about as a co-production with Teatro Real Madrid and Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, and is another important step forwards for the Janáček Brno Festival in spreading Janáček’s lessperformed works on world stages with leading performers,” adds Jiří Heřman, Artistic Director of National Theatre Brno’s Janáček Opera.
Robert Carsen, who has a special relationship with Janáček and is one of the elite directors in the world of opera, has taken charge of the direction. Following his production of Destiny, this is the second opera that he is to stage directly for National Theatre Brno’s Janáček Opera Ensemble. His productions play with great success at the most prestigious opera houses around the world. The Excursions of Mr Brouček is one of Janáček’s less frequently performed operas, because finding the key to connecting its two different halves is far from easy, as Carsen himself admits. “This opera is definitely the most wonderful, strange and crazy work I have ever come across (and I have already come across a few in my time) and a real challenge for our team. The Excursion to the Moon and the second act, which takes in travel, war, resistance, a certain nationalism and victory, made us think about the events of 1968/1969 – the Prague Spring. 1969 also saw the Moon landing. The year 1968 was Space Odyssey, Barbarella, the first Woodstock, flower children – simply the beginning of all the things that can be found in some way in Mr Brouček".
The musical staging is in the hands of Marko Ivanović, chief conductor of National Theatre Brno’s Janáček Opera, who admires this opera for its peculiar humour, the strange language of the libretto and its eccentric musical ideas, and says in explanation that, “it is an extremely original, light-hearted and fantastical work, and Janáček’s caricature of the bourgeoisie of the period has surprisingly lost none of its topicality”.
The title role of Mr Brouček is to be played by the great British tenor Nicky Spence, who appeared at the last Janáček Brno Festival with a stirring performance in The Diary of One Who Disappeared. “Brouček is certainly not a glamorous role and I will enjoy creating every little repulsive aspect of his interesting personality. Janáček always manages to create roles in such a way that they are never superficial characters. I’m sure we’ll find many endearing qualities and a significant amount of pathos at Brouček’s human core,” adds Nicky Spence. In other roles, you can look forward to Daniel Matoušek (Mazal/Blankytný/Petřík) and Doubravka Novotná (Málinka/Etherea/Kunka), who has become a significant addition to the Janáček Opera Ensemble at National Theatre Brno this season. The choreography by Rebecca Howell, who works with the most distinguished theatres and festivals around the world (Salzburger Festspiele, Royal Opera House, Teatro alla Scala, etc.) is to be an important part of the production. The staging of the opera by two choirmasters who are sharing “Brouček’s Excursions” is also extraordinary. Mr. Brouček’s Excursion to the Moon is to be staged by choirmaster Martin Buchta, while Mr Brouček’s Excursion to the 15th Century is to be presented by choirmaster Pavel Koňárek.
None of Janáček’s operas can be called comic; although there is never a lack of humour in them, it tends to be sprinkled judiciously. But in his opera about the landlord from Prague’s Malá Strana, a typically Czech little man, Janáček is sparkling with wit, though here his humour is as sharp as a knife. Janáček based his opera on the popular Brouček novels by the poet Svatopluk Čech and set his satire to music to perfection in the dance rhythm of a waltz with the use of unusual instruments such as a glass accordion and bagpipes.
While Janáček aimed his sharp humour at the ranks of Prague’s critics, intellectuals and artists in the first part of the opera, an excursion to the Moon, the second half set in the times of the Hussites was an attack on the unattractive characteristics of the Czech nation in general. The opera was not written easily. Janáček replaced several librettists and it took nine years before he reached a successful end to Mr Brouček’s Excursion to the Moon after all the vicissitudes he had suffered with the libretto. Nevertheless, he immediately decided to expand the opera with another part, this time an excursion to the 15th century. It is an interesting fact that the Excursions of Mr Brouček is the only one of Janáček’s operas that did not have its premiere in Brno, but at the National Theatre in Prague.
Come with us and explore The Excursions of Mr Brouček and find out where he will take us in Robert Carsen’s new production.
Premiere on 1 November 2024 at the Janáček Theatre Reprises: 3 November and 3 and 4 December 2024 You can take a pre-premiere look behind the scenes with the production team at 18.00 on 18 October at Brno Observatory and Planetarium. Admission free. You can also watch it on a YouTube stream.
