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

The Estates Theatre

Composed by one of the major figures of 20th-century musical theatre – the creator of 16 musicals and hundreds of songs, who launched his career writing the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story – it is an iconic work of its genre. SWEENEY TODD: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a riveting synthesis of dark humour, horror and melodrama, imbued with brilliant musical irony.

SWEENEY TODD: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

State Opera

Carmen is actually one of the first verismo operas that preceded the “manifesto” of the Italian artistic movement. Its style, and the death of the title heroine, which were at variance with the established opéra comique conventions, seem to have been the reason why the work did not give rise to much public enthusiasm at and in the wake of the world premiere in Paris in 1875. Yet Carmen soon triumphed in other European cities.

Carmen

National Theatre Prague

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

Smetana and the librettist Karel Sabina masterfully mocked all those who expected the “national opera” to be an idyllic picture of the Czech countryside, with its inhabitants being virtuous and governed by high morals. The Bartered Bride is thus far more humorous than “national”. Nonetheless, its humour is precisely of the type Czechs so love, and hence Smetana’s opera, abounding in irony, scathing, occasionally even cynical, wit, as well as tenderness and simple joie de vivre, has ultimately become “national” in the best sense of the word ...

The Bartered Bride

National Theatre

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

Song Recitals

Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème ranks among the most frequently staged operas worldwide. The composer was inspired by the Paris-based painter and writer Henry Murger’s popular book Scènes de la vie de bohème, published in 1851, immediately sensing its enormous dramatic potential. He duly asked the librettists and playwrights Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, with whom he had successfully collaborated previously, to pen a text for a new opera. Their fruitful partnership is among the most cherished in the history of opera, comparable to that of W. A. Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte, or Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

La bohème

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.

Barbora Perná

Events

Upcoming events

Aug 26, 2026 - Feb 14, 2027

Die Zauberflöte · Národní divadlo

Aug 27, 2026 - Jun 27, 2027

The Bartered Bride · Národní divadlo

Sep 1 - Dec 11, 2026

Rusalka · Národní divadlo

Sep 4, 2026 - May 5, 2027

Carmen · Národní divadlo

Sep 24, 2026 - Jun 27, 2027

SWEENEY TODD: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street · Národní divadlo

Past events

Sep 25, 2026 - May 8, 2027

Le nozze di Figaro · Národní divadlo

Sep 24, 2026 - Jun 27, 2027

SWEENEY TODD: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street · Národní divadlo

Future and recently performed repertoire

Mařenka in The Bartered Bride by Smetana

Národní divadlo

Rusalka in Rusalka by Dvořák

Národní divadlo

Musetta in La bohème by Puccini

Národní divadlo

Micaëla in Carmen by Bizet

Národní divadlo

First Lady in Die Zauberflöte by Mozart

Národní divadlo

Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd by Sondheim

Národní divadlo

Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro by Mozart

Národní divadlo

Katuška in The Devil's Wall by Smetana

Národní divadlo

About

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