Karina Canellakis conducts Kát'a Kabanová

Chief conductor Karina Canellakis conducts the second opera in our Janácek cycle: the phenomenal tragic opera Kát'a Kabanová,which is based on a Russian play.

The tragedy of the title heroine
Aus einem Guss', that is how you could characterise this opera by Janácek, cast in one piece. However diverse the ingredients may seem - Moravian folk music, Tchaikovsky's patheticism, Debussy's mysteriousness - in Kát'a Kabanová everything leads ineluctably to the tragic end of the title heroine in a single musical maelstrom. Trapped in a loveless marriage, terrorised by a mother-in-law and abandoned by her secret lover, Kát'a chooses voluntary death. Janácek wrote this opera when he was 67 years old, but he was inspired by his own unattainable lover, Kamila Stösslová.

Kát'a Kabanováconquered the world
His operas are partly based on the Czech and Moravian rhythm of speech, a technique the composer had learnt from Wagner and Moesorgsky as well as from Debussy. But despite the dialogue form, the lyrical-dramatic cantabile actually dominates the vocal soundscape. This, in combination with strongly rhythmical passages and surprising time changes, makes him one of the great modernists of the years between the two world wars. With the premiere in 1921 in the Moravian capital Brno, the very slow conquest of the international opera world began. Nowadays it is impossible to imagine the great repertoire without him.