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

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

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 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 singer Floria Tosca, who is even invited to the royal court, and the painter Mario Cavaradossi are respected and adored artists, yet their standing does not safeguard them against the malicious police chief Baron Scarpia. Cavaradossi dies not only because he, a Voltairean, tries to save the life of Cesare Angelotti, the former Consul of the Roman Republic, but also for being Tosca’s lover, Scarpia’s rival. Giacomo Puccini had mulled over Victorien Sardou’s La Tosca ever since 1889, when he saw in Milan a performance of the drama, starring the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt.

Tosca

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

Today Václav Trojan (1907–1983) is known primarily as a composer of outstanding scores for a number of 20th-century Czech films. The most noteworthy are the soundtracks to Jiří Trnka’s world-renowned animated movies Bayaya, Old Czech Legends, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Good Soldier Schweik; Bořivoj Zeman’s fairy tale Once Upon a Time There Was a King ..., featuring Jan Werich in the lead role; and Otakar Vávra’s August Sunday. Moreover, Trojan created the ballets Prince Bayaya and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which were performed to acclaim at the National Theatre in Prague, and the stage poem Golden Gate, to folk motives. He wrote one opera, Kolotoč (Carousel), for children young and old, as the secondary title indicates. The owner of a merry-go-round invites children to climb aboard: “If you want to see Indians, a kangaroo and gorillas, take a seat on the carousel!” And indeed: in the scenes that follow children are taken on dreamy trips to an African rainforest, the Australian Outback, an Indian jungle, as well as to the world of American film. Characterised by bounteous instrumentation and exquisite melody, Trojan’s music co-creates a colourful fantasy story.

Carousel

National Theatre Prague

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.

Ivo Hrachovec

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 24, 2026 - Jun 27, 2027

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

Sep 25, 2026 - May 8, 2027

Le nozze di Figaro · Národní divadlo

Future and recently performed repertoire

Marquis d'Obigny in La traviata by Verdi

Národní divadlo

Water Goblin in Rusalka by Dvořák

Národní divadlo

Priest in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Shostakovich

Národní divadlo

Second Soldier in Salome by Strauss

Národní divadlo

Benoit in La bohème by Puccini

Národní divadlo

Second Man in Armour in Die Zauberflöte by Mozart

Národní divadlo

Sagrestano in Tosca by Puccini

Národní divadlo

Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd by Sondheim

Národní divadlo

Antonio in Le nozze di Figaro by Mozart

Národní divadlo

Moon in Carousel by Trojan

Národní divadlo

About

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