Diary of One Who Disappeared

Van Hove's Tribute To The Music Of Janacek

Opera meets drama in Ivo Van Hove's startling adaptation of Czech composer and folk music champion Leos Janacek's Diary of One Who Disappeared. Originally a 22-part song cycle, Diary chronicles the composer's own obsession and unrequited love for Kamila Stosslova, a married woman 40 years his junior, through the lens of a story about a village boy who falls in love with a Romany girl and is willing to give up his family and home for their union. In this new collaboration with Flemish theater company Muziektheater Transparent, Van Hove brings new depth to Janacek's haunting music with his signature stark design style and heavy-hitting story-telling style. 

Inspired by a series of poems Janacek saw in a local newspaper, Janacek reshaped them and set them to repetitive compositional circles and angular melody lines. In Van Hove's production, British tenor Andrew Dickinson and French mezzo-soprano Marie Hamard recite and sing these lovelorn words alongside a new score by Belgian chamber music composer Annelie Van Parys. Exploring themes of infatuation, identity, loneliness and alienation, the boldly imaginative work is sure to provoke thoughts and ask intriguing questions about the dark side of love.