Claus Guth’s staging of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa was one of the first artistic casualties of COVID-19. It was set to appear at the Royal Opera House in March 2020, but it never did so because the pandemic led to the venue’s closure. It finally premiered in September 2021, and proved to be well worth the wait. If anything, this first revival of the production, by Oliver Platt, is even more accomplished than the initial outing, thanks to the strength of both...

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, deriving from the fact that two brothers died leaving behind both children and stepchildren. The elder...

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...

Director Christof Loy `s first work for the Deutsche Oper in Berlin is a fine elaboration of the characters and their psychological drama in the Bohemian society of the late 19 th century. It is the emotion, the conflict of the Kostelnicka Buryja his interpretation is based upon. The story is told out of her reflexion after having been imprisoned for her deed. The stage design by Dirk Becker supports this access with a clear simple poky box as a synonymous for the enclosure of the...