“This work will be my most tender yet…”—writes Leoš Janáček to the muse of his later years, Kamila Stösslová, and the choice of subject matter for his opera *KAT’A KABANOVA* can be understood as an expression of the composer’s deep affection for Kamila. With this opera, based on the play “The Storm” by the Russian playwright Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, Janáček created what is arguably the most lyrical of his operas—one of his most personal works—in which the precision and power of his musical language blend with the theatrical force of the libretto. The character of Kat’a is inspired by Kamila: “It was your image that I saw in Kat’a Kabanova when I was composing the opera.” Janáček continued, addressing Kamila.
Delicate, gentle, and flowing, in shimmering, softly luminous orchestral colors, the highly idiomatic Orchestra of the National Theater Brno, under the exceptionally skilled baton of Ondrej Olos, performs Janáček’s magnificent music. This conductor renders many wonderfully melancholic passages in a beautiful pianissimo and masters a refined, singer-friendly forte. Where necessary—and in doing so, he brings out Janáček’s modernity—he does not smooth over the score or round off its rough edges, thereby capturing the composer’s harsh and abrupt turns with precision.
The singing on the afternoon of October 31, 2026, in Brno is superb. The smaller roles are very well cast from the ensemble of the National Theater in Brno. The tenors—Peter Berger as the passionate Boris Grigorjevic, Ales Briscein as Tikhon Ivanyc Kabanov, who is oppressed by his mother, and Vit Nosek as the dreamy Vana Kudrjas—are unusually strong, which is rare in Janáček’s works, where they often falter. Jan St’ava is a bass-heavy, lecherous Savej Prokofjevic Dikoj. Vaclava Krejci Houskova is delightful as Varvara with her beautiful mezzo-soprano voice. Jana Hrochova is utterly convincing as the abysmally evil Kabanicha, highly compelling both in her acting and her voice. And in the title role is Katerina Knezikova, who seems to merge with the role in every respect. Nominated for the Thalia Prize in the category “Best Female Opera Performance” precisely for this title role at the National Theater in Brno, she lets her beautiful, rounded, full soprano voice resounds. In this opera, Janáček focused primarily on the drama of the main character, which makes the role very challenging for the performer. Ms. Knezikova’s penetrating portrayal of this delicate female character touches the heart deeply in every nuance, and the thoroughly likable singer is rightly celebrated by the audience with a standing ovation.
“We wanted to establish a symbolic connection to water and its link to dreams, because water has been a theme from the very beginning—Kat’a feels drawn to water. She senses that something terrible is going to happen and that she herself is to blame.” —says director Robert Carsen about water as the central element in his production, which, with its high aesthetic value, literally overwhelms the audience. As part of the tenth edition of the Janáček Festival in Brno, this production—originally created for the Flemish Opera— now returns to the stage of the Janáček Theater to once again impress with its scenography, in which a vast expanse of water covers the entire stage, reflecting Kat’a’s emotions and her inner isolation as well as her tragic fate—suicide by drowning. In this production, the performers move through this (spiritual) space on discreet walkways. Carsen was supported by Patrick Kinmonth (set and costume design), Peter van Praet with his vivid and magical lighting design, and Philippe Giraudeau with his compelling choreography.
The defining element of both Ostrowski’s drama and Janáček’s opera is the Volga. On its banks, Kat’a spends her nights of love with Boris; in its waters, she drowns herself. Carsen’s set evokes the boundlessness of the Russian landscape as well as the protagonist’s boundlessly deep emotions; it shifts between realistic and abstract representation and creates an immense sense of space. Time and again, during the short orchestral interludes, women in white dresses with long hair appear on stage, wading through the water or throwing themselves into it—are they Katya’s doppelgängers? They move the wooden walkways, rearranging them—from the Kabanovs’ island-like apartment, to the large diagonal on which the love scenes take place in the middle of the river, to the cross-shaped formation in the storm scene, to parallel lines far apart during Kat’a and Boris’s farewell. The fact that this production—exemplarily developed from the music and libretto, with its magnificent interplay of water, light, and shadow—does not remain merely decorative is thanks to subtle character guidance and refined direction, which clearly highlight the characters, not least due to the protagonist’s precisely executed performance.
Janáček at his best at the Národní divadlo Brno!
