Fate

The production of Janáček's Fate, which officially opened the Janáček Brno Festival 2020, marks the return of one of the best opera directors, Robert Carsen. This creator of productions valued for their dramatic grasp, poetics and artistic refinement, returns to Janáček's operatic work to expand his Janáček productions with a sixth opera created especially for Janáček's opera NdB. The very first notes of the orchestral waltz from the overture to Fate introduce us to the noble spa society; the simple natural prose is replaced here by language in the style of decadent poets, as Janáček was inspired to write this opera by a beautiful woman, twenty-eight-year-old Kamila Urválková, whom the composer met in August 1903 at his favorite spa in Luhačovice. Kamila described to Janáček her love affair with the composer Čelanský, who portrayed his disillusionment with love in the opera Kamila. Janáček fell so much under Kamila's spell that he decided to create a "completely new, modern opera" in which she would be purified. He called Fate not an opera, but three novel-like episodes in which the viewer finds himself in a completely different environment than in his previous operas - after Jenůfí, Janáček's fourth opera Fate represents a musical and dramaturgical breakthrough into another area.