Actor

At the heart of Věc Makropulos is a recipe for a life-prolonging elixir invented by the doctor Hieronymus Makropulos for Emperor Rudolf II. It was tested on the doctor's beautiful daughter, who has now been on earth for 337 years and has had countless affairs over the generations. In the end, however, the seemingly young woman has to realize that an endless life on this side of the world only brings loneliness...

Věc Makropulos

Vienna State Opera

In addition to his enormous successes in the USA and his native Czech Republic, Antonín Dvořák was also highly revered in Great Britain. Commissioned by England, he wrote the gruesome cantata "The Ghost Bride" for his British fans in 1885. This powerful choral work perfectly captures the dramatic mood of the story in music and was met with rapturous acclaim. Dvořák's fellow countryman, conductor Jakub Hrůša, will continue the Czech-British friendship as Music Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, starting in September 2025. Their first joint tour will include a stop at the Elbphilharmonie.

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Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Jakub Hrůša

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

In Leoš Janáček’s opera, Kát’a Kabanová, the eponymous heroine is ensnared at the heart of an ominous mesh of relations. Her domineering mother-in-law, Kabanicha, oppresses and controls her son Tichon, whose marriage to Kát’a suffers massively from heteronomy. Because Kát’a finds no fulfilment in this family, she flees and fulfils her unsatisfied erotic desires in an affair with Boris. As composer and librettist, Janáček bundles the plot of the literary template, Alexander N. Ostrovsky’s drama, The Storm. The libretto largely dispenses with the portrayal of the external social circumstances, from whence Kát’a’s essence and choices are decisively determined. Instead, Janáček traces the development of the title character in a psychological-sensitive musical language. Kát’a’s feelings of guilt increase continuously until they discharge into a public confession as an emotional storm. The turbulent and in places fanciful music opens the space for passages of lyrical grace and allows us to experience the essence of the characters. In Kát’a, director Krzysztof Warlikowski sees an outsider, who is denied a life in harmony with her desires, and at the end prefers death over lies. The destructive power of religion behind it all is not only found in a small Russian town on the banks of the Volga in the 1860s, where the libretto places the plot, but rather can also be seen everywhere all over the world.

Káťa Kabanová

Max-Joseph-Platz

Even world-famous conductors have dreams. Simon Rattle for example has dreamt of conducting the Czech Philharmonic in Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass since it first bewitched him as a young man when he heard the orchestra’s Supraphon recording with Karel Ančerl. This sacred work will be preceded by the second set of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances. These, together with the first set, will be recorded for future release on PENTATONE.

Czech Philharmonic • Simon Rattle

Rudolfinum

For all his reputation as a prickly artistic genius whose music crackles with heaven-storming power, Beethoven shared with his teacher Haydn a delightful musical wit, nowhere so clearly demonstrated as in his Eighth Symphony. The cycle concludes with his hugely ambitious and all-embracing Ninth, a revolution in and of itself; it was the first symphony to include chorus, transforming Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” into a rallying cry for humanity.

Andris Nelsons conducts Beethoven Symphonies 8 & 9

Boston Symphony Orchestra

After performing the previous night with the Czech Philharmonic on our grandest stage, the Prague Philharmonic Choir graces the intimate Zankel Hall with this powerful, all-Czech program in honor of the 100th Year of Czech Music celebration. The ensemble is one of the world’s leading champions of Czech choral music—a singular tradition—and in this concert, they perform vocal works by many of the nation’s most beloved composers: Eben, Janáček, Dvořák, Martinů, and Jan Novák.

Prague Philharmonic Choir

Carnegie Hall

Meet one of opera’s most unforgettable characters, Katerina Ismailova, in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s (BSO) concert performance of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The BSO’s remarkable history with Shostakovich’s music dates back to the composer’s lifetime, and in recent years has included multiple Grammy Award–winning recordings and season highlights at Carnegie Hall. Of his “intimate relationship with [Shostakovich’s] music,” Music Director and Conductor Andris Nelsons says, “I feel like I know him, in a mystical way.” There’s no better way to hear this music than with the BSO at Carnegie Hall.

The mermaid Rusalka loves the prince and wants to become a human being in order to be with him forever. With her voice, she pays the witch Ježibaba for the transformation and leaves home and family. Rusalka's appearance with the people initially depresses the prince, but the magical, voiceless being remains a foreign body in the human world and finally the lover turns away from her – which means death for him and banishment for her. In his fairytale opera, premiered in Prague in 1901, Dvořák set to music the contrasting worlds of the ghostly flowing underwater kingdom and the distanced stiff royal court with great music-dramatic verve. With the parable-like material about the value of one's own identity, the meaning of the human soul and the transformation of the main character Rusalka from a romantic mermaid to a loving person capable of suffering without a real home, the internationally working director Christoph Loy makes his debut in the Semperoper.

Rusalka

Semperoper Dresden

Experience a musical highlight of the pre-Christmas season in the heart of Vienna: the Wiener Symphoniker's Advent concert with chief conductor Petr Popelka in the beautiful St. Stephen's Cathedral. In 2025 a ‘Bohemian Christmas’ will take centre stage - with touching works by Antonín Dvořák, Bedřich Smetana, Josef Suk and others.

Wiener Advent

St. Stephen's Cathedral

Andris Nelsons leads some of the most acclaimed stars of opera today in performances of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa, a work considered by many the greatest American opera. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1958, Vanessa premiered at the Metropolitan Opera that year. Barber wrote the opera on a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti; they aimed for a cosmopolitan, nostalgic work on lost love and the consequences of self-delusion. Barber’s romantic lyricism is ever-present in this powerfully affecting work, a centerpiece of this season’s E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One focus.

Vanessa | E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One

Rusalka feels trapped in a world from which there is no escape. She is ready to put her immortality on the line in return for a human soul, so she can gain the love of a handsome prince. But she must pay for it with her voice. Muted and liberated from her dark world, she is forced to watch as the prince rejects her in favor of a foreign princess – dooming them both. She cannot live, she cannot die, yet nevertheless at the end, she helps the prince find his death with a “rescuing” kiss.

Actor

Pavel Černoch

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 30 - Dec 6, 2025

Věc Makropulos · Wiener Staatsoper

Dec 11, 2025

Wiener Advent · Wiener Symphoniker

8 - 10 Jul, 2026

Vanessa | E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One · Boston Symphony Orchestra

23 - 25 Jul, 2026

Rusalka · Bayerische Staatsoper

Past events

Nov 30 - Dec 6, 2025

Věc Makropulos · Wiener Staatsoper

Sep 22, 2025

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House / Jakub Hrůša · Elbphilharmonie

Future and recently performed repertoire

Princ in Rusalka by Dvořák

Semperoper Dresden

The Prince in Rusalka by Dvořák

Bayerische Staatsoper

Anatol in Vanessa by Barber

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Singer in Glagolitic Mass by Janáček

Czech Philharmonic

Albert Gregor in The Makropulos Affair by Janáček

Wiener Staatsoper

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