historical fresco, world premiere
It is the year 1809. Napoleon Bonaparte is the ruler of a huge empire stretching from Koenigsberg to the Pyrenees, from Warsaw to Naples, from Antwerp to the mountains of the north-western Balkans, from Hamburg to the island of Corfu. He is, in short, the most powerful man in Europe. When in September that year he visits Brno for the second and final time in his life, it is currently occupied by his soldiers, and not long has passed since his July victory in a battle near Znojmo and the negotiation of an armistice that basically means the defeat of Austria. Napoleon is practically at the peak of his career. He certainly doesn’t want to miss out on holding a ceremonial parade with his army at the battlefield near Slavkov (Austerlitz), at the place where four years previously he had celebrated his greatest military victory.
Now let’s move forward to the year 1908, 99 years later. Lord Maurice Arnold de Forest, British politician, racing driver and owner of Veveří Castle, has invited his childhood friend Winston Churchill, the then British Minister for Trade, to his castle for the third time. Unlike the previous two occasions, this visit is special: Churchill is there with his wife Clementine on their honeymoon. Unfortunately, Clementine has reason for complaint – instead of devoting himself to his new wife, her husband is spending his time writing a book about Napoleon, in which he aims to provide a daring never-before-discovered explanation for the general’s epochal victories. Churchill has the feeling that it is exactly Napoleon’s lost speech to his soldiers from 1809 that holds the key to the “Napoleon Code”. However, when he wakes up one day at Veveří and discovers that Clementine has been kidnapped, young Winston has to start dealing with completely different problems altogether, and descend into the depths of Brno’s underworld…
The reality of Napoleon and Churchill’s connections with Brno inspired the team of authors, who have already taken several fun looks at Brno’s history and legends in the productions Baron Trenck, Mendel and Brno’s Wheel, to new acts of hedonistic Dumas-esque fable-spinning. A carousel of unbelievable historical situations, some real, some imagined, will once again spin below the open sky and fill the captivating setting of the Bishop’s Courtyard with dance and song – and it will be a world premiere.
