Jan Šťáva

Can the darkest moments of life also lift our souls? Drawing on his own experience in a Siberian prison in the company of misfits, murderers and theives, Dostoevsky was inspired to write his novel Notes from a Dead House, telling his brother at the time: ‘Believe me, there were among them deep, strong, beautiful natures, and it often gave me great joy to find gold under a rough exterior.’ In Janáček’s hands, Dostoevsky’s inspiration and the raw material drawn from an appalling world of incarceration find an even more powerful form of expression in his last opera, From the House of the Dead. Unfettered by conventional story-telling, Janáček wrote his own libretto, freely weaving together a series of stories of everyday prison life and of the fates of individual convicts.

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.

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We are off on an excursion, two excursions in fact, in the company of a landlord from Prague, who is, let us say, a little rough around the edges. The first journey of Mr Brouček is to the Moon where our beer-drinking hero (literally ‘Mr Beetle’) meets the oh-so sophisticated Moon-dwellers. In the second, we travel through time to the early 15th century to a heroic period in Czech history when the Czechs fought off armies of crusaders from the rest of Europe. Will Mr Brouček fare any better in Prague circa 1420, when Czechs are on the eve of a famous victory defending their Hussite faith? For this new production from the heart of the composer’s home country, Janáček Festival Brno has entrusted the staging to the famous Canadian director, Robert Carsen who thus opens the 2024 Festival with this, his sixth production of a Janáček opera.

An indispensable symbol of Christmas. J. J. Ryba's most popular composition performed by A. Poláčková, V. Hajnová, P. Nekoranec, J. Šťáva, the En arché chamber choir, the Česká píseň mixed choir, and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by J. Bělohlávek. The Czech Christmas Mass, also known as the "Hey, Master" Mass, in Latin Missa solemnis Festis Nativitatis D. J. Ch. acomodata in linguam bohemicam musicam – que redacta per Jac. Joa. Ryba, is a Czech-language church composition by this year's jubilee celebrant Jakub Jan Ryba (1765–1815). Although it is structured in the same way as a Latin musical mass with parts of the ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, etc.), it is a pastoral play applied to traditional liturgy; the story tells of the annunciation of Christ's birth and the arrival of the shepherds at the manger. The Czech Christmas Mass has a purely pastoral character, set in a Czech environment.

‘We are from Bohemia and you ask if we can sing?’ An unknown couple arrives in a small Czech village from abroad and most of the locals watch them with suspicion. Only the old teacher Benda, a lover of music, opens his door to them, only to find that the strangers are closer to them than one might think.

Human soul, pure human soul! The water nymph Rusalka longs for life above the water, for love and a human soul. The witch knows the way, but the price is high – Rusalka loses her ability to speak, but what good is speech when for her beloved prince she is just a wave on the water… The world of men, however, turns out to be cruel and full of betrayal, over which even her pure love cannot prevail. This new version of Rusalka is based on Lars-Åke Thessman’s original set design for Rusalka at the Gothenburg Opera 2012.