The Adventures of Mr Brouček
Leoš Janáček
(1920)
New production

Accompanying this production is a series of free pre-show talks and open rehearsals. Tickets for these must be booked in advance. For more information and to book click here.

From wild excursions to the moon, to adventures back in time to 15th century Prague, Mr Brouček lives in parallel, surreal worlds, fuelled by beers and encounters from the Vikarka Inn.

Mix in a host of weird and wonderful characters and costumes, all strangely reminiscent of his friends in the pub, and this modern day Mr Benn is easily embroiled in the complexity of his reality and dreams.

The music theatre of Janáček’s rarely performed comic opera is just as adventurous as Mr Brouček himself. A large cast including a great character actor in John Graham-Hall as the lead role and the esteemed French soprano Anne Sophie Duprels, bring to life the composer’s vision.

Energetic young director John Fulljames leads a strong production team in this collaboration with Scottish Opera and is a fun and eccentric opera with a dark side.

This is a journey not to be missed.

Sung in English
Lasts approximately 2 hours 30 minutes

"The updating is nicely judged, giving a wry humour to the lunar excursion and a real poignancy to the historical one, as well as injecting a touch more humanity into the comedy in the process. The same lightness of touch carries over into John Graham-Hall’s beautifully observed and judged central performance of Mr Brouček complete with three piece suit, briefcase and toothbrush moustache." Andrew Clements, The Guardian

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"If its laughs you want, you have them with John Graham-Hall’s Basil Fawlty of a Brouček. It’s a subtly brilliant performance: disgust, scorn, cowardice all eked out of a horribly ungrateful libretto." Neil Fisher, The Times

"Life in the opera house would be far duller without Janáček’s madcap Adventures of Mr Brouček." Neil Fisher, The Times

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"With Finn Ross's video projections blending news footage with milky, Méliès fantasy and a moon-landing in which the Czech flag is planted on the pockmarked surface, this gentle satire is a delight." Anna Picard, The Independent

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Janáček’s The Adventures of Mr Brouček is given a witty and perceptive updating in John Fulljames's Opera North and Scottish Opera co-production.’ Anna Picard, The Independent

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"Vocally it is very good, John Graham-Hall’s Brouček steering clear of the usual drunken caricature, but just tipsy enough for his reverie to perfectly fit into Fulljames’s serious look at the 1940 uprising in Prague. Anne Sophie Duprels in her various sex driven roles, is the jewel of the performance; Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts makes a fully believable Mazel, while Donald Maxwell’s redoubtable baritone almost bares all as shining radiance." David Denton, Yorkshire Post

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"Opera North fields a fine cast, too, most of them tripling up as Moon people and both ancient and modern inhabitants of Prague, with John Graham-Hall tirelessly determined as the flummoxed, cowardly  Brouček. Well worth catching in Leeds or on tour." George Hall, The Stage

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Director John Fulljames talks about the challenge of putting on an adventurous piece like The Adventures of Mr Brouček and what the audience should look out for.

Can you tell us a little about the piece?
The Adventures of Mr Brouček is made up of two distinct parts, which Janáček wrote as separate operas. The first part sees Mr Brouček dream about life on the moon and the second part is a dream set in the fifteenth century. The dreams are different distortions of the same reality – Mr Brouček's life in Prague where he is small businessman.

What is it about the piece that instantly grabbed you?
I think it was the sincerity of Janáček’s vision – here is a comedy which has a serious satirical and political edge. Janáček was arguing for the uniqueness of Czech identity and building a defence of cultural and political nationalism. I think these are interesting subjects for today particularly because of how our relationship to fundamentalist religious and political nationalism has changed in our new century. The opera has a wonderful surreal quality resulting from its style of satirical comedy. In opera, comedy can be hard to pull off because the timing is so difficult to get right but Mr Brouček’s dreamworlds are so fantastical that there is inherently great potential for comedy.

Are there any particular challenges with putting on the piece?
The biggest challenge is to tell the story really clearly so that an audience really understands it at once. The opera has so much packed into it that if you’re not careful it can knock you over like a juggernaught! Also, lots of the targets of Janáček’s satire such as the Aesthetic movement or the specifics of Czech history aren’t meaningful to audiences in England today.  So during the four years we’ve been working on it, we’ve tried to strip back our vision of it so that the basic story is very clear.

How have you approached the translation?
The conductor Martin Andre and I translated the piece together. We last worked together for Opera North on Romeo et Juliette. In making the translation we’ve tried to be as close to Janáček’s original as possible and have stuck much more closely to his text than any previous translation. We’ve developed a very strong collaboration, which I hope will be fruitful in the rehearsal room.

Can you tell us a little about the cast?
All the singers appear in both dreams – as Mr Brouček re-imagines his relationships with the people around him in the context of each dreamworld.  So it's a piece demanding a very strong ensemble who can work together in a very detailed way to clarify the complicated story and make the links between the different worlds clear. It's the sort of the opera which Opera North excels at. Mr Brouček is a colossal role which requires a brilliant all-round performer. John Graham Hall won’t really leave the stage for 2 hours.

What should the audience look out for?
Well, it’s fun to spot the parallels between the moon world, the 15th century world and the home world. The great joy in rehearsing is that we’re constantly discovering new parallels. We should have a list in the foyer for audience members to write down everything they spot!

Can you tell us a little about the music?
It’s infectious, playful and full of joy (listen to an extract from it above). The first opera is full dance music – waltzes, mazurkas, polkas. The mood darkens in the second opera which is built around Hussite war hymns instead. Janáček worked every dramatic articulation into his score, which makes it very demanding to rehearse but gripping in performance. The travelling music to the moon is everything you’d expect for a voyage to outer space...
 

Act 1

Mr Brouček staggers out of the Vikarka Inn below Prague castle and attempts to find his way home. He gets caught in a tiff between the two lovers Malinka and Mazal. Once they are reconciled everyone waves Mr Broucek off for the night and he goes home to sleep. In fact he gets transported to the moon and finds it colonized by pretentious artists and aesthetes who eat flowers – all strangely reminiscent of his friends in the pub. He shocks them all by eating sausages and leaves the artists singing hymns in the Temple of the Arts. Back at the Inn the day is breaking: the customers are leaving and hear that Mr Broucek had to be carried home. Malinka and Mazal embrace, having spent the night together.

Act 2

Once again Mr Brouček is leaving the inn, but after a conversation about fifteenth-century Prague he finds himself lost in one of the medieval tunnels. The author Svatopluk Cech appears and laments the declining heroism of the Czech nation. Brouček finds himself in fifteenth-century Prague amidst the holy wars between Jan Hus and the Holy Roman Empire and displays exceptional cowardice for which he is sentenced to death. His plea that he is a child of the future and not yet born carries no weight and he is put in a barrel to be burnt. Back in the pub, the landlord hears groaning from the cellar and finds Brouček drunk in a barrel. He tells the landlord how he helped liberate Prague, but begs him not to tell anyone.

Characters