Come and listen to the production team and soloists of the new production of Janáček's opera The Trips of Mr. Brouchkova! The peephole will take place on October 18 from 18:00 at the Brno Observatory and Planetarium.
“You don't look too bad, you pale brat up there. Oh, surely your people are happier than us poor earthlings!" calls Matěj Brouček to the moon shining in Prague. The artist's imagination knows no bounds, so why not go there with Janáček and find out if Mr. Brouček is right.
The motto "Without borders!" could also be used to describe the work of director Robert Carsen, the creator of productions valued all over the world for their dramatic grasp, poetics, humor and artistic sophistication. The path of the famous director crossed paths with the work of the Czech composer many years ago, and today Robert Carsen has staged six Janáček operas to his credit. In 2020, he created a production of Fate for the Brno ensemble, and now he is returning to the stage of the Janáček Theater to officially open the Janáček Brno 2024 festival with his new production of The Trips of Mr. Broučková.
None of Janáček's operas can be called comic; although there is never a lack of humor in them, it is rather that rare spice. In the opera about the landlord from Malá Strana, a typically Czech man, but Janáček bursts with humor, even though he is properly sharpened here. Janáček found a model in the popular novellas of the poet Svatopluk Čech, and he completed his satire with music in the dance rhythm of a waltz and with the use of unusual instruments, such as a glass accordion or bagpipes, to perfection. If in the first part of the opera, a trip to the moon, Janáček aimed his sharp humor at the ranks of Prague's critics, intellectuals and artists, in the second half of the Hussite period he attacked the ugly characteristics of the Czech nation in general.
