New productions

The life of the founder of German Romantic opera, Carl Maria von Weber, was to a considerable extent linked with the Bohemian lands. From 1813 – 1816 he was the principal conductor of the Estates Theatre in Prague, fell in love there with singer/actress Caroline Brandt and married her in the Prague Church of St Henry in 1817; and paid several curative visits to the spa resort of Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad). It was also in Bohemia that he set the plot of his most famous opera, Der Freischütz. His last opera, Die drei Pintos, to the libretto of Theodor Hell, remained unfinished. At the behest of the composer’s grandson, Carl, the task of completing the work was in 1887 undertaken by Gustav Mahler. He complemented the score by music from Weber’s other works, and added passages of his own making, inspired by Weber’s themes. Mahler conducted the opera’s world premiere in Leipzig, on January 20, 1888, and seven months later, on August 18 of the same year, presented it at the New German Theatre (today’s Prague State Opera). The plot is based on the popular ploy of fake identity, which is in this particular case three-fold: Don Pinto, a wealthy, rude landowner, finds himself cheated by two young men, Don Gaston and Gomez, pretending, each in his own turn, to be him. They foil Pinto’s pretensions to fair Donna Clarissa who in her turn loves Gomez. Needless to say, the opera then moves on towards a happy ending.

The pre-premiere, on December 22, 2011, is taking place on the 100th anniversary of Gustav Mahler’s death.

Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry) by Pietro Mascagni (1863 – 1945), a one-act opera set in a Sicilian village, is considered to be the key work of Italian verismo, introducing contemporary characters, people with poor background and from lower social strata onto the stage. At the world premiere in Teatro Costanzi in Rome on May 17, 1890 Mascagni received endless standing ovations and Cavalleria rusticana triumphantly flew around the world. This inspired the then almost unknown Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1857 – 1919) to compose an opera in the same style – and for him too the world premiere of I pagliacci (The Clowns) in Teatro dal Verme in Milan on May 21, 1892 meant an immediate success. Common to both the titles is the topic of passionate love and deadly jealousy leading to a murder. In Cavalleria rusticana a lightheaded Lola would not give up her former lover Turridu, now engaged to Santuzza. Lola’s husband Alfio challenges Turiddu to a duel in which he kills him. Just as tragic is the end of I pagliacci, a story of an aging actor called Canio who learns about a love affair of his young wife Nedda and in revenge kills both her and his rival. No wonder that both the works soon started to be presented together during the same evening – for the first time in Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1893 – though they have also been presented together with other operas, in most varied, sometimes even bizarre, combinations. The recording of Vesti la giubba, famous Canio’s aria, by Enrico Caruso became the first record in history to sell over a million copies. Both the titles also made their mark in the history of technological advancement: on January 13, 1910 the world’s first live radio broadcast of an opera was transmitted, namely the performance of these operas at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; with Ema Destinn as Santuzza and Enrico Caruso as Canio.

Both the operas immediately attracted also the directors of Prague opera houses, the National Theatre and the New German Theatre (now the Prague State Opera). According to the prevailing conventions it was the National Theatre that was entitled to present the new works first, but the director Angelo Neumann requested a substantial cut in the prescribed period for the staging in the New German Theatre: Cavalleria rusticana thus received its first performance here already on April 18, 1891 and I pagliacci on 16 April 1893. The usual combination of these two works was first done by Angelo Neumann on May 14, 1893; both the works were conducted also by Pietro Mascagni (6 January 1925). During the Smetana Theatre era they were staged once only, first I pagliacci (February 7, 1965) and a year later (March 5, 1966) Cavalleria rusticana together with I pagliacci.

Dancing horror love story

From dark corners of the Paris Opera a voice resounds that calls the name of the very young ballet dancer Christina Daaé and encourages this extraordinary talent. Hardly anybody knows that the mysterious voice is the voice of the Phantom, a disfigured genius roaming around the labyrinth of catacombs... The ballet ensemble comes with another delicacy, a romantic story on the theme of the novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra by Gaston Leroux. The head of our production team is Libor Vaculík who set this exciting theme also known from a musical comedy version by Andrew Lloyd Webber into a specific ballet environment. The dance/acting roles of Raoul, Christine, the Phantom and a number of other heroes will challenge again the soloists and the entire ensemble. This attractive material set into music by Petr Malásek and choreographed by Libor Vaculík has everything necessary to reach both Czech and foreign audiences and to take its place alongside successful works from past years like The Lady of the Camellias and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The original premiere of this revived production took place at the Prague State Opera on April&nsbp;10, 2008.

Arguably the most celebrated Spanish novel, Don Quijote de la Mancha, from the pen of the Renaissance poet, novelist and playwright, Miguel de Cervantes, has to this day inspired thousands of adaptations, literary, musical, dramatic, and cinematic. In the domains of opera and operetta alone, it has been set by more than 50 composers, ranging from Francesco Conti (Vienna, 1719) and Antonio Caldara (Vienna, 1727), to Giovanni Paisiello (Naples, 1769), Wilhelm Kienzl (Berlin, 1898), to Jules Massenet (Monte Carlo, 1910), Richard Heuberger (Vienna, 1910), and Stanislaw Moniuszko (Warsaw, 1923). The first ballet version of Don Quijote was created in Vienna, in 1740, the work of ballet master Franz Hilverding, and in 1768 it was staged, with music from Joseph Starzer, by the ballet reformer Jean-Georges Noverre.

The famous classical ballet by the Viennese composer, conductor and violinist, Ludwig Minkus, based on the Cervantes novel and focused primarily on the love story of Kitri and Basil, was first performed in Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, on December 26, 1869, in Marius Petipa’s choreography, and it has since made countless comebacks onto all major international stages. Thirty-three years after its premiere, in 1902, it received a new choreography from Alexander Gorsky, at the time a leading innovator of ballet, a version which has never failed to score with audiences, and has survived on the repertoire of major ballet companies to the present time.

The Prague State Opera is presenting the work’s classic version choreographed by Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky, in a production directed by Jaroslav Slavický, long-time soloist of the Prague National Theatre ballet company and currently the head of the City of Prague Dance Conservatory.

The French composer, Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas, whose life spanned almost the entire 19th century (1811 – 1896), wrote twenty operas. Two of them earned him immortality: Mignon, and Hamlet. The popularity of his first seventeen operas – most of them opéras-comiques, where music alternated with spoken parts – did not last, and nor did it reach beyond the French borders. Ambroise Thomas thus had to wait 35 years for his first genuine success, which came with the opera Mignon, in 1866, when he was 55 years old. The theme – the story of Mignon, from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – was taken care of by a duo of renowned French librettists, Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. The opera was premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, on November 17, 1866, and became an utter triumph. The Emperor Napoleon III, who attended the work’s 22nd repeat performance, was so enthralled that he ordered the opera to be performed fifteen times during the 1867 World Exhibition in Paris. The exhibition ran from April 1 through October 31, and by July 18, Mignon had seen its 100th showing.

In the Bohemian lands, the opera was first performed as early as 1869, at Prague’s Estates Theatre. The New German Theatre, today’s Prague State Opera, staged its first production of Mignon on May 5, 1889, and still in the same month the title role was performed here by a famous guest artist, the Swedish soprano Sigrid Arnoldson. After the Second World War, Mignon did not feature on the repertoire anywhere in Prague until 1992. On April 1, 1992, the Prague State Opera marked the beginning of its existence as an independent institution, and Mignon became its first new production (first night on May 23, 1992).

Gala Concert

Wagner’s operas became the mainstay of the repertoire that was built up at the New German Theatre (today’s Prague State Opera) by its first director, Angelo Neumann, a close friend of Richard Wagner. During his era (1888 – 1910), he mounted over 600 performances of Wagner’s operas at the New German Theatre, apart from which he organized regular spring and autumn Wagner cycles, and even made a Russian tour with a programme of operas by the Bayreuth Master. In subsequent stages of the New German Theatre’s history, the company’s Wagnerian cult was taken heed of most notably by the principal conductors, Alexander Zemlinsky and Georg Széll. In the course of the era when the opera’s premises were renamed to Smetana Theatre and the institution was incorporated into the National Theatre, its stage became the venue of new productions of the operas Der fliegende Holländer (1959, 1986), Lohengrin (1964), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1978, 1982), Das Rheingold (1975), and Tannhäuser (1955). During the yearlong existence of the Smetana Theatre as an autonomous company, the list was complemented by a new production of Rienzi (1991). Then, the already fully independent Prague State Opera (from April 1, 1992) declared as part of its policy the programmatic continuation of the legacy of the New German Theatre. One of the first steps along this road was a new staging of Tannhäuser (first night April 10, 1993), followed four years later by Lohengrin (May 17, 1997), then Die Walküre (concert production, June 1, 1998), and after a fairly long pause, Der fliegende Holländer (May 29, 2008). The year 2010 saw a memorable moment, marking Wagner’s symbolic comeback to the building which had played host to his music, assigning it a prominent status throughout the fifty-year-long existence of the New German Theatre: the composer’s bust was unveiled in the dress circle of the historical building. This event took place on May 20, 2010, on the day of the premiere of a new production of Tristan und Isolde, directed by the prominent British conductor, Jan Latham-Koenig. The production was mounted under the patronage of the Richard Wagner Society in Prague which also co-financed, with the Prague State Opera, the making of the bust. The unveiling constituted an overture to the Wagner Congress which will be held in Prague, in 2012. The matinée, Tribute to Richard Wagner II, on May 20, 2012, will mark the official closing of the Congress.  

Matinée marking the official closing of the Richard Wagner Congress

Wagner’s operas became the mainstay of the repertoire that was built up at the New German Theatre (today’s Prague State Opera) by its first director, Angelo Neumann, a close friend of Richard Wagner. During his era (1888 – 1910), he mounted over 600 performances of Wagner’s operas at the New German Theatre, apart from which he organized regular spring and autumn Wagner cycles, and even made a Russian tour with a programme of operas by the Bayreuth Master. In subsequent stages of the New German Theatre’s history, the company’s Wagnerian cult was taken heed of most notably by the principal conductors, Alexander Zemlinsky and Georg Széll. In the course of the era when the opera’s premises were renamed to Smetana Theatre and the institution was incorporated into the National Theatre, its stage became the venue of new productions of the operas Der fliegende Holländer (1959, 1986), Lohengrin (1964), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1978, 1982), Das Rheingold (1975), and Tannhäuser (1955). During the yearlong existence of the Smetana Theatre as an autonomous company, the list was complemented by a new production of Rienzi (1991). Then, the already fully independent Prague State Opera (from April 1, 1992) declared as part of its policy the programmatic continuation of the legacy of the New German Theatre. One of the first steps along this road was a new staging of Tannhäuser (first night April 10, 1993), followed four years later by Lohengrin (May 17, 1997), then Die Walküre (concert production, June 1, 1998), and after a fairly long pause, Der fliegende Holländer (May 29, 2008). The year 2010 saw a memorable moment, marking Wagner’s symbolic comeback to the building which had played host to his music, assigning it a prominent status throughout the fifty-year-long existence of the New German Theatre: the composer’s bust was unveiled in the dress circle of the historical building. This event took place on May 20, 2010, on the day of the premiere of a new production of Tristan und Isolde, directed by the prominent British conductor, Jan Latham-Koenig. The production was mounted under the patronage of the Richard Wagner Society in Prague which also co-financed, with the Prague State Opera, the making of the bust. The unveiling constituted an overture to the Wagner Congress which will be held in Prague, in 2012. The matinée, Tribute to Richard Wagner II, on May 20, 2012, will mark the official closing of the Congress.