Name: Libuše
Start: 2026-10-28T19:00:00
Location: National Theatre Prague

Svatopluk Sem

Robert Jindra

Jiří Brückler

Pavel Švingr

Richard Samek

Kateřina Jalovcová

Tamara Morozová

Lucie Hájková

Martin Bárta

František Zahradníček

Jaroslav Kyzlink

Yvona Škvárová

Aleš Jenis

Veronika Kaiserová

Mária Porubčinová

Petr Dvořák

Kateřina Štefková

Jan Burian

Daniel Dvořák

Národní divadlo

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

And if we were to name the places at which Mozart in person premiered an opera of his and which still function as theatres, the one and only candidate in the world would be the Estates Theatre in Prague. The National Theatre Opera has proudly cherished this unique tradition for decades.

Don Giovanni

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 opera Nabucco, depicting the dramatic story of the subjugation of the Israelites by the King of Babylon, ranks among Guiseppe Verdi’s most celebrated works. Phenomenal chorus scenes, extremely impassioned virtuoso arias, as well as the perennially topical themes of expansive war, lust for power, betrayal, life and death, are the reasons why it has always been a staple of opera houses’ repertoire.

Nabucco

The book, featuring symbolism bound with nature, everyday rural life and tradition, comprises passionate and erotic tales teeming with supernatural beings and macabre phantoms. The Wedding Shirts, The Water Goblin and The Noonday Witch, magical myths of love and spine-chilling fables, was adapted for the stage of the National Theatre historical building by the SKUTR creative tandem of stage directors Martin Kukučka and Lukáš Trpišovský. The two artists have a penchant for the subjects treated by Erben – ritualised archetypal themes, such as love and death, the relationships between the mother and the child, man and woman, humans and nature, have appeared in their productions in a myriad of forms and contexts.

A Bouquet

National Theatre Prague

The ballet adaptation of Abbé Prévost’s novel L’Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut shows Sir Kenneth MacMillan at his very finest, attesting as it does to his profound insight into human psychology, choreographic craft and narrative skill. The artist admirably expresses the power of fateful love in the central characters’ impassioned duets.

L'Histoire de Manon

In 75 letters, the two main protagonists, the cruel Marquise de Merteuil and the cynical Vicomte de Valmont – tough players, rivals and partners – unfurl a dangerous game with the feelings of their victims, abounding in malicious emotional manipulation and brazen seduction within the web of a variable love polygon. The roles in the “dangerous game of the dangerous liaisons” are played by humiliation resulting from being spurned and desire for revenge, as well as longing for achieving satisfaction from having control over the fate of another person and steering the others’ feelings and passions. Yet not even masters of calculated strategy can be safe against the natural power of love that is capable of both saving and destroying everything …

Dangerous Liaisons

In the near future, somewhere in the middle of Europe, there is a land where not only lies, but all things imagined are forbidden under strict penalty, including fables and imagination. Because they challenge the given, measurable facts verifiable by reason, undermine the ruling power and, in an apparent paradox, point too clearly to the very essence of things, the truth. Such audacity must be punished.

Baron Münchhausen

An awkward and somewhat unhappy churchwarden quits his job at a big city church to find a new life in a remote mountain village. By a tragicomic coincidence, he is considered the new parish priest whom the forlorn community desperately searches for and needs. Having tried in vain to explain and escape the part in a ‘miracle’, the churchwarden eventually accepts the role of the accidental saviour. His unorthodox ways and understanding for all human sins and weaknesses capture the hearts of the peculiar villagers. However, he clashes with the local teacher, who used to be the local celebrity and authority and who promotes ‘non-spiritual’ education. The faith of a man who has humbly assumed the desired task thus stands in juxtaposition to the self-confident ‘common sense’. But what if not everything is as it seems?

End of a Priest

They are virtually invisible and nameless, yet those in powerful fear them. The inconspicuous heroes who have dared to confront tyrannical regimes and make their voices heard. While they are unlikely to make it to a magazine cover, their stories of courage and determination spread uncontrollably, as modern fables secretly whispered in people’s kitchens and living rooms. Their stories give others hope that the world might become a better place, even if just a little bit. They shed rays of light into absolute darkness. Ever more such women writers, journalists, students, artists, workers, and others raise across totalitarian states.

Perpetuum Havel

Palac Akropolis

The first has been conceived by Robert Bondara, a Polish choreographer, stage director and teacher, formerly a dancer with the Polish National Ballet and since 2018 director of the Poznan Grand Theatre Ballet.

Avant-Garde

Thomas S. Eliot wrote his poem – an opus magnum of the 20th century – as a reflection of the horrors of WWI and situated it in a landscape woven from the historical consciousness of humanity and voices of European literature. Through this open barren land, where town meets sea and desert and the state has collapsed, rambles don Quixote, the wandering knight who upholds the values of chivalry and never loses his faith in the power of love. Is he obsolete, foolish? While don Quixote’s acts are incomprehensible by reason, our hearts root for him. The production searches for the fundamental values in a country swept by the war. It is also a tribute to the naive adoration of Dulcinea del Toboso and to the thousands of heroes conceived by human imagination, the great spirits shining as a still point of the turning world.

Don Quixote. The Waste Land

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.