Brouček - Turning the Tide?

Simon Rattle adds a sixth Janáček opera to his repertoire

Beer-sodden dreams: Peter Hoare (Mr Brouček) Picture © Mark Allan

Simon Rattle has been closely associated with Janáček operas from the early days of his professional career. In 1977, aged 22, he toured Jonathan Miller’s staging of The Cunning Little Vixen - Glyndebourne’s first piece by the composer, which I caught in Bristol. He subsequently added Katya Kabanova (English National Opera 1988), Jenůfa, The Makropoulos Case (Aix Festival 1996, 2000) and From the House of the Dead (Staatsoper Berlin 2011).

Rattle’s credentials as a non-Czech Janácek conductor are now second only to those of the late Charles Mackerras, but I never expected him to tackle the least exportable of the mature operas, The Excursions of Mr Brouček. Yet this season Rattle has already conducted a staging in Berlin (the Robert Carsen production reprised from the 2024 Brno Janáček Festival) and two concert performances at the Barbican Centre - the latter with the London Symphony Orchestra, Tenebrae (the chorus directed by Nigel Short) and six of his Staatsoper soloists, including Peter Hoare as Brouček and Lucy Crowe and Aleš Briscein in the various incarnations of the young lovers. In addition to three roles in Brouček’s various locations/time zones, Gyula Orendt sang the part of the Author or Poet, Svatopluch Čech, on whose prose tales this strange opera is based. It’s a part often sung by an heroic tenor rather than a lyric baritone.