The National Theatre Opera and the State Opera will present nine new productions and give performances of 29 repertoire pieces in the 2023/24 season.
“I look with great humility and respect at the new season, during which we will celebrate the Year of Czech Music 2024 and commemorate a major Bedřich Smetana anniversary,” says Per Boye Hansen, Artistic Director of the National Theatre Opera and the State Opera.
“The programme has been compiled in collaboration with our two music directors, Robert Jindra and Andriy Yurkevych, internationally sought-after conductors who are absolutely dedicated to working with us.”
The first new opera production to premiere at the State Opera will be of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’ELISIR D’AMORE, a bel canto gem and staple of the global repertoire. Staged by the UK’s Julia Burbach, nominated in 2019 for the “Best Newcomer” prize in the prestigious International Opera Awards poll, it will be conducted by Andriy Yurkevych.
The second new production to be presented at the State Opera will be Dmitri Shostakovich’s LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK. Directed by Martin Čičvák and conducted by Hermann Bäumer, it will receive its opening night in November 2023. In February 2024, the State Opera will host the premiere of a new adaptation of Guiseppe Verdi’s NABUCCO, depicting the suffering of an oppressed nation, which will be staged by Tomáš Pilař and conducted by Andriy Yurkevych.
After a series of delays due to the Covid pandemic, music lovers will finally be able to enjoy the Czech premiere of György Ligeti’s LE GRAND MACABRE. Staged by the British director Nigel Lowery, who will also design the sets and costumes, and conducted by Jiří Rožeň, the production, to be performed at the State Opera, will be a spectacular culmination of the season. In November 2023, the National Theatre will host the premiere of a dark comic opera by the composer Jan Kučera and the stage director and librettist David Radok. The brand-new one-acter, titled DON BUOSO, is a prequel to Giacomo Puccini’s masterpiece GIANNI SCHICCHI, with which it will be presented within a double bill.
Following on from the favourably received premiere in the 2022/23 season of Der Rosenkavalier, in January 2024 we will present at the Estates Theatre a new production of Richard Strauss’s celebrated ARIADNE AUF NAXOS. It will be staged by the Slovak director Sláva Daubnerová and conducted by Robert Jindra.
A few weeks before Christmas 2023, the National Theatre Opera’s selection for children and entire families will be extended with an adaptation of Paul Hindemith’s TUTTIFÄNTCHEN, depicting the story of a puppet that comes to life and tears the heart out of a woodcarver’s daughter, who is ultimately saved by an apprentice. The Christmas musical tale, featuring songs, dance, mime, acrobatics and, naturally, puppets, will be presented in Czech premiere at the Estates Theatre, as arranged and translated into Czech by the dramaturge Ondřej Hučín, and staged by the director, mime artist and choreographer Radim Vizváry, the artistic director of Laterna magika. The production will be part of the Musica non grata project, which has been implemented with the financial support of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Czech Republic and whose aim it is to revive music by 20th-century composers persecuted by the Nazis.
In the autumn of 2023, Musica non grata will encompass a special 60-minute peripatetic programme for schools and kindergartens, made up of fairy tales and songs by Lena Stein-Schneider and Ilse Weber, composers of Jewish ancestry, who were incarcerated at the Theresienstadt camp-ghetto. For October 2023, Musica non grata will co-organise the 58th edition of the International Musicological Colloquium in Brno, which will be dedicated to Czech avant-garde opera in the first half of the 20th century, paying great attention to Czech-German composers of “Entartete Musik”. On 4 February 2024, the Estates Theatre will host the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre, who will perform Viktor Ullmann’s one-act operas Der zerbrochene Krug (The Broken Jug) and Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis). The four-year Musica non grata cycle will conclude on the first weekend of April 2024 with performances at the State Opera of the production of Alexander Zemlinsky’s Kleider machen Leute (Clothes Make the Man), and concert versions of Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie (A Florentine Tragedy) and Hindemith’s Sancta Susanna.
The Year of Czech Music 2024 will open with a festive performance of Bedřich Smetana’s opera Libuše and will continue with numerous other exciting cultural projects and events. On 2 March 2024, we will mark the 200th anniversary of Bedřich Smetana’s birth with a gala concert, to be followed on the next day by a special performance of Libuše.
A week later, we will present a new adaptation of Antonín Dvořák’s RUSALKA, which too will be a contribution to the Year of Czech Music. Directed by the SKUTR tandem, it will be conducted by Tomáš Netopil. In May, we will premiere a new production of another Smetana opera, THE SECRET, to be staged by Ondřej Havelka and conducted by Robert Jindra. OPERA NOVA, a festival of contemporary Czech opera, is scheduled for June 2024.
The 2023/24 season will also contain special concerts. On 18 September 2023, within the Dvořák Prague festival, the National Theatre Opera will give a performance at the Rudolfinum. On 21 October we will hold a Concert for Ukraine at the State Opera; and on 11 November Vítězslav Novák’s dramatic cantata The Storm will be presented at the National Theatre.
For the 2023/24 season, we have prepared a new project, comprising a series of concerts of songs and chamber music, to be performed by National Theatre Opera and State Opera soloists at the Estates Theatre. They will take place on 23 September, 7 and 28 October, and 11 November 2023, and 17 February, 23 March, 20 April and 18 May 2024.