«  Sometimes I think that I’m a bird. I’m tempted to take flight. I’ll try it… I used to be such a free spirit! But here my spirit has shrivelled up! » ACTE 1, KÁT’A

WOMEN’S SECRETS
IMPOSSIBLE LOVE STORIES
MELANCHOLY

Libretto by Leoš Janáček

Kát’a Kabanová, who lives in a Russian town on the banks of the Volga, is married to Tichon and continually harassed by her mother-in-law. When her husband is sent to Kazan, the young woman meets Boris and falls in love with him. But soon she is overcome by remorse. Tichon’s return is a tragedy for her…

FOR MADAME KAMILA…

Inspired by Alexander Ostrovsky’s Russian drama The Storm (1859), Kát’a Kabanová immerses listeners in a devastating matriarchy where the rigour of education rivals the moral and physical dictatorship that the author and composer wished to denounce. The dreadful oppression, profound melancholy, and inescapable fate of the young, sensitive Kát’a, who must live in this intransigent society, are reminiscent of Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary, which was published around the same time as Ostrovsky’s play.

Dedicated to the composer’s muse, the young Kamila Stösslova, the opera premiered in Brno in 1921. It was performed in Prague the following year on the strength of its success. Along with Jenůfa, composed almost twenty years earlier, it soon became Leoš Janáček’s most performed opera. The emotional power of this opera surpasses anything the Czech master had composed until then, blowing away audiences with its relentless rollercoaster of emotions and staggering unity. As the Volga flows to the rhythm of the seasons, the spectator is led from terror to the desire for impossible love and from sensuality to the eternity of death.

• LAST PERFORMED AT THE ORW
  OCTOBER 2000
• NEW PRODUCTION
  OPÉRA ROYAL DE WALLONIE-LIÈGE
• AVEC LE SOUTIEN DU TAX SHELTER DU GOUVERNEMENT FÉDÉRAL BELGE ET DE BEL ARTS FUND