The Excursions of Mr. Brouček

Leoš Janáček

Janáček Theatre / Opera Dates and tickets

“You don’t look so bad, you pale fellow up there. Oh, surely your people are happier than us poor earthlings!” calls Matěj Brouček to the Moon shining on Prague. An artist’s fantasy knows no bounds, so why don’t we just set out 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, who has created productions valued all over the world for their dramatic perception, poetry, humour and artistic sophistication. The path taken by the famous director intersected with the work of the Czech composer many years ago, and today Robert Carsen has productions of six of Janáček’s operas under his belt. He staged a production of Destiny in Brno in 2020, and he is now returning to the stage of the Janáček Theatre to officially open the Janáček Brno 2024 festival with his new production of The Excursions of Mr. Brouček.

None of Janáček’s operas can be called comic; although there is never a lack of humour in them, it tends to be sprinkled judiciously. But in his opera about the landlord from Prague’s Malá Strana, a typically Czech little man, Janáček is sparkling with wit, though here his humour is as sharp as a knife. Janáček based his opera on the popular “Brouček” novels by the poet Svatopluk Čech and set his satire to music to perfection in the dance rhythm of a waltz with the use of unusual instruments such as a glass harmonica and bagpipes. While Janáček aimed his sharp humour at the ranks of Prague’s critics, intellectuals and artists in the first part of the opera, a trip to the moon, the second half set in the times of the Hussites was an attack on the unattractive characteristics of the Czech nation in general.

In a co-production with Teatro Real, Madrid and Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin.

Premiere: 1^st November 2024 at the Janáček Theatre

Staged in the Czech original with Czech, English and German titles

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