Three special works mark the current season of the Prague National Opera, one of which is already on show.
Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Platée premiered on 21 November 2024 at the Prague State Opera under the baton of Václav Luks, founder of the baroque orchestra Collegium 1704 and the vocal ensemble Collegium Vocale 1704. The production is directed by the creative duo SKUTR.
An essential role in the production of Platée is played by the interpretation of the score by conductor Václav Luks, founder of the Baroque orchestra Collegium 1704 and the vocal ensemble Collegium Vocale 1704, which focuses on historically informed performance of Baroque music. Collegium Vocale 1704 and some key musicians from Collegium 1704 will join the State Opera Orchestra for the Platée at the State Opera.
The SKUTR directors (Martin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský) were inspired by the fact that the premiere of Rameau’s Platée took place at a wedding and by the opera’s allegorical prologue. They have come up with an imaginative production that uses some of the Baroque props, but everything is in keeping with a modern aesthetic.
The opera, about an unattractive nymph who wants to be admired but becomes the victim of a cruel plot hatched by Jupiter and mocked by the gods, stars Marcel Beekman as Platée and Olga Jelínková and Shira Patchornik in alternating roles as Thalie.
A new production of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa, a story of adversity and redemption, will premiere at the National Theatre on 22 and 24 May 2025. The production will be conducted by Norwegian Stefan Veselka and directed by Catalan Calixto Bieito, who previously created an acclaimed adaptation of Janáček’s Katja Kabanova for the National Theatre. The cast includes Alžběta Poláčková as Jenůfa, Dana Burešová as Kostelnička Buryjovka, Aleš Briscein as Laca Klemeň and Martin Šrejma as Števa Buryja.
Aribert Reiman’s Lear will be premiered at the Prague State Opera on 7 and 12 June 2025. The parable of foolish human pride, the delusion of self-importance, the danger of rejection as well as the acceptance of responsibility and the decay of a seemingly stable world will be staged by Barbora Horáková Joly under the musical direction of Hermann Bäumer. Tómas Tómasson stars in the title role of Lear. It will be the first production of Lear since the death of Aribert Reiman in March 2024.
„Along with Grand Macabre, which we will be staging in 2024, Lear is one of the few operas written in the last fifty years that has remained in the opera repertoire. The opera, which has been performed in the most important opera houses and festivals, will be presented for the first time in the Czech Republic, with the aim of presenting opera as a contemporary art form that is still alive,” says Per Boye Hansen, artistic director of the Prague National Theatre and State Opera.
