Based on the fairytales of Karel Jaromír Erben and Božena Němcová, Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka of 1901, with a libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil, tells the story of the eponymous water sprite. She tells her father Vodník, the water goblin who rules the lake where she lives, that she has fallen in love with a Prince who she has seen hunting. Wishing to become human so that she can embrace him, she seeks the assistance of the witch Ježibaba who explains that...

There are few story lines more magical than that of a beautiful young but blind princess who gains sight through the power of love to a young knight. Peter Tchaikovsky's last opera Iolanta is just that - magical, luminous, poetic and with a rare happy ending. The story is set in 15th century Provence. The daughter of King René is blind, but does not know it because her entourage cares for her in such a way that she does not perceive her missing sense as a deficit. Her...

Jenůfa, which premiered in Brno in 1904, is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by the composer. It is based on the play Její pastorkyňa by Gabriela Preissová, and is one of the very first operas to be written in prose. Set in a Moravian village in the nineteenth century, the plot concerns a series of tangled relationships that derive from the fact that two fathers both married twice, and had a child by three of their four...

Demon, the opera by Anton Rubinstein with libretto by Pavel Alexandrovich Viskovatov based on the homonymous poem by Mikhail Lermontov, was premiered in 1875 and was performed often in Russia towards the end of the 19th century, but today is an opera outside the repertoire, almost a rarity. The fact that Liceu decided to participate in a co-production of the title alongside the Helikon Opera from Moscow, the Staatstheater from Nürnberg and the Opéra National de Bordeaux,...

There is always something happening in William Kentridge’s staging of Wozzeck. It can be hard to know what to look at—the supernumeraries creeping around in gas masks? The improbably piled-up junk that serves as a set? The charcoal drawings projected as backdrops? The little videos than range from absurd cartoons to scenes of abuse? It almost doesn’t matter. All these elements work together to create a cohesive atmosphere haunted by war and poverty. The production has...