Káťa Kabanová

Why can’t people fly like birds?  

Spanish director Calixto Bieito is known as a radical figure in the opera world, someone who does not make compromises. ‘I am guided by intuition’, he has said.   

Bieito shows what happens to sensitivity and the thirst for life in confined conditions. The young Káťa is trapped in her own home. She longs for contact, but her spineless husband Tichon is cold and her mother-in-law Kabanicha is cruel. Her desperate thirst for the love she lacks leads to rash decisions with fateful consequences.   

‘Kamila, if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t want to live. It’s just an alliance of our souls which binds us.’
The composer Janáček to his unattainable beloved 

Opera was well suited to the composer Leoš Janáček. It provided him with a natural outlet for emotions, including his own. He fell in love with a married woman 38 years his junior. Kamila remained unattainable, so the composer wrote her into his music and also into the character of Káťa. Káťa’s monologues have tremendous expressive power. She is present in the music even when she is not singing. 

Performed by our visiting opera company National Theatre Prague.

Program and cast

TEAM

Conductor

NN

Director

Calixto Bieito

Set designer

Leonor Guardia

Costume designer

Eva Butzkies

Chorus master

Lukáš Kozubík

National Theatre Prague Chorus
National Theatre Prague Orchestra 

Language

Czech

Surtitles

Finnish and English

Duration

approx. 1 hrs 30 min, no interval