Motto of the 9th year of the festival Without Borders! it was Janáček's fifth opera, The Voyages of Mr. Broučkova, where the protagonist and I go to the moon and on a journey through time to the 15th century. The same motto could 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 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 festival with his new production of Mr. Brouchkovy's Trips.
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 a native 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 a dance rhythm and with the use of unusual instruments such as a glass accordion or bagpipes to perfection. If the first part of the opera, A Trip to the Moon, aimed its sharp humor at the ranks of Prague critics, intellectuals and artists, the second half from the Hussite era then poked at the ugly characteristics of the Czech nation in general.
The opera was not created easily, Janáček replaced several librettists and it took nine years before, after all the vicissitudes with the libretto, he reached the successful end of Mr. Brouček's Trip to the Moon. But at the end of the work, he sighed over his verse poets: "But our poets! A person to tell them everything - and it will still turn out poorly!" Nevertheless, he immediately decided to expand the opera by one more part, this time with a trip to the 15th century. Together with the librettist F. S. Procházka, they managed this quickly, but since then Janáček has been writing the libretto himself. Why did he actually choose Čech's Mr. Brouček? He described this beautifully in a letter to Kamila Stösslova: "So do you know what that Bug is? So quite an ordinary man; he talks about the whole world and melts his whole life around a mug of beer. There is no good in the world. You ask: 'Then why did you choose such a person for the opera?' So that he would disgust everyone, that he would be a laughing stock and that he would be a warning! The Russians also had such a 'soft' person; his name was Oblomov. Actually, every second Russian was an Oblomov - and where did they get it! A terrible revolution is now cleansing it in streams of blood. That's why I'm exhibiting Brouček - as a warning. We also have enough of those Bugs on all sides! Only the stomach is everything to them. So my dear Brouček gets drunk again, falls asleep somewhere in Hradčany and has a dream: He is flying to the moon! It falls there. Oh, the horror! The people there are fed only by the smell of flowers. They only let Brouček smell the flowers. And now a Lunar girl falls in love with him there! No blood, body like a tow!'
