Janacek's Most Romantic Opera
Fifteen years after its last staging at the Met Opera, Janacek's thrilling opera Katya Kabanova returns under the direction of renowned German conductor Lothar Koenigs, with American lyric soprano Susanna Phillips in the title role of the tragic heroine and Czech tenor Pavel Cernoch in the role of her lover Boris. Filled with soaring folk-inspired melodies, themes and jaunty rhythms, the opera was inspired by the composer's own unrequited love for a married woman named Kamila Stosslova.
Repressed passions boil over in the tumultuous story of Katya, an inhabitant of a small isolated town near the Volga river in the mid 1800s. Trapped by societal pressures and an unhappy marriage which is presided over by a controlling mother-in-law, Katya longs for another life. When her husband goes away on business, she begins a torrid affair with the handsome Boris. Plagued by guilt, her sanity begins to unravel and the call of the rushing water of the Volga proves too strong...