In 1917, 63-year-old Leoš Janáček met young mother Kamila Stösslová, 26, and fell madly in love with her. He wrote her more than 700 letters and made her the muse for the works he composed in the 11 years he had left.
An ambivalent fascination as Kamila did not love him. From the extraordinary vitality of the heroines in The Diary of a Missing Man or The Cunning Little Vixen to the harshness of Emilia in The Makropoulos Affair or the suicide of the heroine of Katya Kabanova, Janáček's unhappy passion strongly inspires his writing and his female characters. The choice of the young Polish artist Barbara Wysocka as director, violinist, actress, creator of images and unusual environments, theatre and opera director, promises a surprising discovery.
Two other women are at the helm: young conductor Elena Schwarz and set designer Barbara Hanicka.
Language
In Czech with French surtitles
An opera in 3 acts,
Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
First performed in Vienna in 1919
New production