Mozart’s illustrious operatic oeuvre is rounded off by a work providing both copious entertainment and food for thought, affording a fantastic spectacle and presenting a magical ritual of initiation of the human spirit. All that is encompassed in Die Zauberflöte, and all that can be found in Vladimír Morávek’s colourful production, featuring a thrilling atmosphere and teeming with mysterious symbols. There is something for everyone – adults and children, including, if fear hasn’t consumed them, the very youngest.

Die Zauberflöte

The Estates Theatre

Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata, to the libretto based on Alexandre Dumas’s novel La Dame aux camélias, about Marie Duplessis, the famous courtesan and idol of Parisian society in the 1840s, is actually the very first major opera treating a contemporary social theme. The work’s premiere in 1863 in Venice was a flop: the audience was appalled that the lead role had been assigned to a courtesan who, what’s more, was portrayed in a positive light. Yet Verdi’s opera soon started garnering plaudits and is now one of the most popular repertoire titles the world over.

La traviata

State Opera

The fruit of the collaboration between the two great creators, Antonín Dvořák and Jaroslav Kvapil, who were close as artists and friends alike, was a magical, dreamy story of the great, unfulfilled desire of the water nymph Rusalka, a work in which Dvořák’s musical genius reached its apex. The fairy-tale atmosphere inspired the composer to create singular, impressionistic music replete with melodic imagination and masterful instrumentation, a suggestive expression of the play of waves and the reflection of moonlight on the surface of a lake, as well as the overwhelming magic of a fairy-tale dream.

Rusalka

Antonín Dvořák’s two most successful operas, The Devil and Kate, and Rusalka, are based on fairy-tale motifs. Blending folk and humorous with lyrical and fantasy elements is one of the typical (and still very popular) traits of Czech drama. Dvořák created a masterly patchwork of contrasting scenes – folksy, breezy, fiendishly fervent and courtly noble.

The Devil and Kate

National Theatre Prague

Cupid’s arrows fly around as they please, binding the seemingly incompatible and dividing the seemingly inseparable. Mozart’s philandering Count Almaviva, his neglected wife Rosina, the Countess’s pretty maid Susanna and the crafty, albeit occasionally naïve, valet Figaro know all too well … The new National Theatre production of Le nozze di Figaro has been created by two distinguished female artists: the English conductor Julia Jones and the Czech stage director Barbora Horáková Joly.

Le nozze di Figaro

Verdi said that for his new opera he was looking for a subject depicting "people of special characters as bearers of courageous and varied deeds." He found it in García Gutiérrez's successful drama set in 15th-century Spain. Verdi set this chivalric drama full of twists and turns and compelling denouements to music with typical romantic emotion, and it definitely does not lack magnificent melodies.

The Troubadour

Theater of JK Tyl New Stage

The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich set Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk to a libretto he wrote together with Alexander Preis after the eponymous novella by Nikolai Leskov. He himself referred to the opera as a satirical tragedy. The main character, Katerina, is a murderess haunted by qualms of conscience. Yet, with a touch of bitter humour, Shostakovich also focuses on the moral decay of the inhabitants of a Russian village, revealing the omnipresent torpidity and recklessness. Life without hope and love is the very reason for the heroine’s downfall.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

The speculations about whether Libuše is Bedřich Smetana’s most mature work within the context of his opera oeuvre, or even within the context of Czech opera in general, whether and how it can stand its ground as against the airiness of The Bartered Bride, the lyricism and absorptive power of Dvořák’s Rusalka, or the emotion and drama of Leoš Janáček’s operas, do not result in definitive conclusions – it will always depend on the angle from which Libuše and any other renowned Czech opera is viewed.

Libuše

Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel is one of the most frequently performed operas in Germany. Inspired by the Grimm brothers’ popular fairy tale, the libretto was written by the composer’s sister Adelheid Wette, who modified the rather macabre story, adding the characters of the Sandman and the Dew Fairy, as well as the instrumental dream pantomime scene in the forest, and concluding it with the resurrection of the witch’s victims and the happy reunion between the children and their parents. With the music written in the grand Wagnerian romantic style, Humperdinck’s opera also contains folk rhythms, songs for children and old melodies. The world premiere, in Weimar on 23 December 1893, was conducted by Richard Strauss, totally enraptured by the piece. Enraptured too was the audience, and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel has ever since remained extremely popular in Germany, where every December it has been performed at more than 35 opera houses. In 1905, the piece was first shown at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where it has often been staged during Christmas.

Hänsel und Gretel

Dvořák – Stabat Mater

Municipal House

Bedřich Smetana’s last completed opera, The Devil’s Wall, the fruit of collaboration with Eliška Krásnohorská, who penned the librettos for his previous operas The Kiss and The Secret, bears both its originally intended comic nature and, more significantly, a final lyrical tone. The composer evidently identified with the character of the ageing nobleman Vok, projecting his own feelings, perhaps ever more so than before. This remarkable work can thus be interpreted as, among other things, a reflection on Smetana's life, one fraught with emotional upheavals.

The Devil’s Wall

The German composer Richard Strauss based Salome, one of his most celebrated operas, on Oscar Wilde’s eponymous tragedy. The first to portray the title role in the play was the famed French actress Sarah Bernhardt (her company gave four performances at the National Theatre in Prague), whose art also contributed to the popularity of other dramas  (Tosca and Madame Sans-Gêne), subsequently adapted as operas.

Kateřina Jalovcová

Events

Upcoming events

Aug 26, 2026 - Feb 14, 2027

Die Zauberflöte · Národní divadlo

Aug 29, 2026 - Jan 24, 2027

La traviata · Národní divadlo

Sep 1 - Dec 11, 2026

Rusalka · Národní divadlo

Sep 3, 2026 - Mar 21, 2027

The Devil and Kate · Národní divadlo

Sep 25, 2026 - May 8, 2027

Le nozze di Figaro · Národní divadlo

Future and recently performed repertoire

Flora Bervoix in La traviata by Verdi

Národní divadlo

Witch in Rusalka by Dvořák

Národní divadlo

Sonetka in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Shostakovich

Národní divadlo

Herodias's Page in Salome by Strauss

Národní divadlo

Singer in Stabat Mater by Dvořák

Prague Symphony Orchestra

Third Lady in Die Zauberflöte by Mozart

Národní divadlo

Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro by Mozart

Národní divadlo

Hänsel in Hänsel und Gretel by Humperdinck

Národní divadlo

Azucena in The Troubadour by Verdi

J.K. Tyl Theatre

Kate in The Devil and Kate by Dvořák

Národní divadlo

Radmila in Libuše by Smetana

Národní divadlo

Záviš in The Devil's Wall by Smetana

Národní divadlo

About

Kateřina Jalovcová hasn't added a bio