The first visit to the International Opera and Music Festival in Brno, now in its tenth year — JANÁČEK BRNO 2026 — takes SIMPLY CLASSIC to three remarkable venues: an opera performance at the Janáček Theater in Brno is framed by an afternoon of string quartet music at Villa Löw-Beer and a piano matinee at the Leoš Janáček House.
Since its premiere as part of the 2018 Janáček Festival, the production of Leoš Janáček’s three-act opera, *Prihody Lisky Bystrousky* (The Cunning Little Vixen)—which also marked the opening of the National Theater in Brno in 1965—has been among the Janáček Theater’s most popular and finest productions ever. This production was created by director Jiri Herman—who has also served as opera director at the National Theater in Brno since January 2015—with support from Dragan Stojcevski (set design), Alexandra Gruskova (costume design), and Daniel Tesar (lighting design). As for the aesthetics of this production, in which the colors orange and green dominate, it was likely inspired by the wonderful, illustrated book “Rudolf Tesnohlidek. Liska Bystrouska,” illustrated by Vendula Chalankova; Jiri Herman has relocated the plot itself to a children’s home.
This twist stems from—and is entirely consistent with—the work’s origins. Janáček’s opera is based on a serialized story by the journalist and poet Rudolf Tesnohlidek, which first appeared as a comic strip in a Brno daily newspaper. The writer in question, in turn, had rescued a toddler abandoned in the forest; in 1924, he initiated the first Christmas tree in the Moravian Republic in Brno with donations for abandoned children, the proceeds of which financed and opened the Dagmar Children’s Home in Brno—a facility housed in a building designed by architect Bohuslav Fuchs that still stands today. The discovery of the little girl in the forest also inspired Leoš Janáček: the forester catches the young vixen in the forest and takes her home.
Director Herman now tells the story of the clever little fox through the eyes of the children, who nearly overcrowd the stage with their toys and transform the forester’s and his wife’s house—here presumably that of the caretaker and the home director; in Herman’s version, the “Revirnik” apparently becomes the “Domovnik”—into a forest and themselves into forest animals. The transience of life is symbolized by the fact that the woman’s fox-red knitted items keep multiplying, while the elders gaze wistfully at the young ones.
The cycle of life and untamed nature, with its own laws of living, loving, and dying; a philosophical meditation on transience and new beginnings—all this and much more is Janáček’s opera, composed in 1924. However, there is one thing this profoundly dense work is certainly not: a children’s opera—and fortunately, Herman does not stage the work as such, even though there are many children in the audience who, like the adults willing to engage with this multi-layered production on several levels, watch the colorful, incredibly dynamic action on stage with delight. In Herman’s work, the human and animal worlds repeatedly merge in an intelligent way, opening spaces for play and reflection, as well as the vastness of nature: it thus becomes clear that this opera oscillates between animal fable and philosophy of life. However, the director completely omits the drastic themes related to eroticism and sexuality—after all, the forester brings his young vixen lover into his home, a moment where Leoš Janáček’s “late wild side” comes through in full force—which is why this successful production proves to be thoroughly suitable for children.
The fact that Tomas Netopil is conducting the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna in the orchestra pit of the National Theater in Brno proves to be a stroke of pure musical luck, as this conductor—who is intimately familiar with this music—interprets Janáček’s work primarily as a Moravian “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” This magnificent music flows melodically and with a distinctly lyrical quality; Netopil allows the orchestra—which has been kept at a very low volume—to reach its highest dynamics only in the hymnal climax of the finale. Until then, the forest and its wildlife sparkle with a mild, gentle autumnal glow; Janáček’s sharp, rugged quality does not come through here. Netopil’s refined conducting is perfectly attuned to the production and the season, for which the conductor and the exceptionally well-prepared orchestra—which Netopil brings onto the stage during the final applause—are also enthusiastically acclaimed by the audience.
The cast also proves to be excellent this evening. Katerina Knezikova, nominated for the Thalia Prize in the category “Best Female Opera Performance” for her title role in Janáček’s *Káťa Kabanová* at the National Theater in Brno, lets her beautiful, round, full soprano voice ring out as the clever little fox. In no way are they outdone by her, Vaclava Krejci Houskova sings the enchanting Fox with a round, well-timed mezzo-soprano. Adam Plachetka portrays the forester with a powerful baritone and a vocally compelling presence. Many other small roles are cast from the house ensemble, ranging from adequate to excellent. Adelka Plachetkova, the daughter of Katerina Knezikova and Adam Plachetka, is enchanting as the little fox on stage; this highly successful production is, in a sense, a “family performance.”
It should be noted, however, that the long 25-minute intermission after the second act significantly disrupts the immense pull of Janáček’s pulsating music; for this reason, his last four operas—beginning with *Kata Kabanova*, his so-called “Kamila operas,” all of which are feature-length—should be performed more effectively without an intermission.
This outstanding performance of “Bystrouska” on the evening of October 24, 2026, will go down in the annals of the Janáček Theater, however, in that the great bass singer Richard Novak—a living legend of the Czech opera and art song scene who had already performed at the opening of the new Janáček Theater—was honored on stage by Artistic Director Herman after the performance on the occasion of his milestone birthday. But that was not all: the 95-year-old celebrant, still an imposing presence as a singer and visibly moved, 95-year-old honoree—who remains an imposing presence as a singer—performed the final scene from Janáček’s *The Little Fox*, this touching, reflective introspection in which the forester becomes one with his life and all-encompassing nature, with extraordinary expressiveness and emotion in every nuance, his voice still fully intact and delivered almost flawlessly. A standing ovation for Richard Novak at the National Theater in Brno!
Earlier, on the afternoon of October 24, 2026, there will be an exciting chamber music program at Villa Löw-Beer—built in the Art Nouveau style by Moritz Fuhrmann for Alfred Löw-Beer at the beginning of the 20th century—featuring the Arola Quartet, founded in Bern in 2024. The four young musicians—Samuel Hirsch (first violin), Alla Ternova (second violin), Viktoria Vanteeva (viola), and Zoia Sudnis (cello), hailing from Switzerland, Ukraine, and Russia—demonstrate tremendous inspiration in performing exceptionally challenging, thematically rich works from the string quartet repertoire that delve deep into the human soul. The program ranges from Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer Sonata”—in which a young woman is terrorized by her despotic, psychopathic husband—to Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110—heart-wrenchingly tragic, deeply melancholic, “Music written with the blood of the heart” (Carl Sandberg)—to Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4 in C major, Sz. 91, BB 95—one of his greatest works, modern and expressive, experimenting with acoustic effects and the technical possibilities of the four string instruments, which, after a brief intermission, becomes the climax of the quartet’s performance and of the afternoon. The young quartet deserves the highest praise for its courage in performing such complex works one after another.
The matinee on October 25, 2026, will then take us to the Pamatnik Leose Janacka—the Leoš Janáček House—the great composer’s small residence in the garden of the former organ school, where he spent the last eighteen years of his life and where he composed his greatest masterpieces during a unique, late creative surge. Jan Jirasky, who was appointed head of the piano department at the Janáček Academy of Music in Brno in 2007—where he himself studied and earned his doctorate with a comprehensive dissertation on Janáček’s piano works—will perform a select, non-stop program lasting just over an hour on the composer’s own Ehrbar grand piano. The focus is on the predominantly lyrical and flowing piano cycle *PO ZAROSTLEM CHODNICKU – AUF VERWACHSEMEM PFADE* JW VIII/17, with No. IV “The Virgin of Friedeck,” No. VII “Good Night!,” No. IX “In Tears,” and No. X “The Little Owl Has Not Flown Away” stand out as highlights: exceptionally precious miniatures, interpreted with great sensitivity and subtlety. In addition, the program features No. I “Andante” and No. II “Allegretto” from the new series *PO ZAROSTLEM CHODNICKU* JW VIII/17—which were not published during the composer’s lifetime—supplemented by two short piano pieces by Janáček, *Con moto* and *Allegro*. The program opens with the MAZURKAS, Op. 56, B 111, by Antonín Dvořák—a friend of Janáček’s—considered among his finest works for piano; they are performed in an extremely wistful, melancholic manner, at times somewhat reminiscent of Schubert.
The trip to the beautiful city of Brno was, once again, more than worth it thanks to the intense and enriching musical experiences.
