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Leoš Janáček
Libretto by Leoš Janáček after F. M. Dostoyevsky

New production

Alexandr Petrovitch Goryanchikov Olaf Bär, Alyeya, a young Tatar Eric Stoklossa, Filka Morozov, known in prison as Luka Kuzmich Stefan Margita, Tall Prisoner Peter Straka, Short Prisoner Vladimir Chmelo, Commandant Jiří Sulženko, Old Prisoner Heinz Zednik, Skuratov John Mark Ainsley, Chekunov Jan Galla, Drunk Prisoner Tomáš Krejčiřík, Cook Martin Bárta, Pope Vratislav Křiž, Young Prisoner Olivier Dumait, Dirne Susannah Haberfeld, A Prisoner Performing Don Juan and the Brahmin Ales Jenis, Kedril Marian Pavlovic, Shapkin Peter Hoare, Shishkov Gerd Grochowski, Cherevin Andreas Conrad

Orchestra: Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Choir: Arnold Schoenberg Chor (director: Erwin Ortner)

Actors: Thomas Bäuml, Helmut Gebeshuber, Rainer-Maria Gradischnig, Dominik Grünbühel, Karl Hoess, Elsayed Kandil, Viktor Krenn, Günther Matzka, Max Mayerhofer, Kurt Raubal, Michael Reardon, Alexander Strauss, Florian Tröbinger, Darko Vukovic

“I am at present completing what may be my greatest work – this new opera. I am so excited, I feel as if my blood were about to gush forth”, Leoš Janáček wrote in a letter to Kamila Stösslová dated 2 December 1927.

Patrice Chéreau will direct Janáček’s large-scale opera with an ensemble of approx. 20 singers, actors and a male choir, conducted by Pierre Boulez. “In every creature, there is a divine spark” is the motto Leoš Janáček put at the beginning of his last opera. The composer himself wrote the libretto based on a text by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The plot revolves around the lives of male inmates of a prison camp who have lost all hope of changing their future for the better. An eagle with an injured wing that at the end is healed and flies away to freedom symbolises a romantic moment that can be interpreted as a double break with both the music and the political situation in Europe at the time of the 1930 premiere. The utopia of freedom and the yearning for a life worth living create a differentiated picture of society through the hierarchies and relationships between prisoners. Janáček died in 1928 while preparing a fair copy of his opera, an affecting and deeply moving work filled with foreboding of inhumane times to come.

This production is the first collaboration of Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau since their legendary Bayreuth Ring of 1976-80. This will also be the first interpretation of a Janáček opera by Pierre Boulez.

Introduction:
Free admission, 12, 14, 16, 18 May, 7 p.m., Theater an der Wien, Grosser Pausenraum