Alžběta Poláčková

Jakub Jan Ryba – Česká mše vánoční „Hej, mistře!“

A young woman in love with a composer is forced by her mother to take a rich suitor. When the two lovers are reunited years later, happiness is theirs for the taking, but a tragedy happens that changes everything. Robert Carsen’s premiere of Destiny opened the 2020 edition of the Janáček Brno Festival (International Opera Award winner 2019). It comprises some of Janáček’s most magnificent music, which sways from the peaks of romantic rapture to the depths of desperation and back again.

Dalibor is based on events that took place in the 15th century: having led a peasant revolt, the Knight Dalibor of Kozojedy was imprisoned, by order of King Vladislav II of Bohemia, in a tower in Prague Castle that still bears the name “Daliborka” to this day. Legend has it that he learned to play the violin while he was incarcerated, and that the people passing by the tower would be moved on hearing his music.

The insatiable Don Giovanni is not picky: anyone will do, from Donna Elvira to her maid and the bride at a country wedding. But when one of his conquests ends in murder, he sets off a chain of events that takes him forever closer to his bitter fate. For the first time, Prague’s Estates Theatre, where Don Giovanni premiered some 230 years ago, calls on a director from overseas to stage Mozart's opera. Will Alexander Mørk-Eidem’s new production break with its long tradition of the famous rake’s last day? Is his Giovanni an incorrigible slave to his instincts? Is he a provocateur? Or a mere catalyst around whom Mozart thoroughly depicts the constantly changing universe of female emotions?