Výlety pana Broučka - 2 CD

This recording presents Leoš Janáček’s opera The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, performed by the soloists, chorus and orchestra of the National Theatre in Prague under conductor Jaroslav Kyzlink. A century after the opera’s premiere, the same theatre returned to Janáček’s work in a new studio recording made in the Rudolfinum’s Dvořák Hall. Dedicated by the composer to T. G. Masaryk, the opera places an ordinary, narrow-minded, cowardly, hypocritical, boastful and drunken Prague citizen at its centre rather than a celebrated figure from Czech history. In The Excursion to the Moon, Mr. Brouček’s dull provincialism contrasts with the aesthetic and intellectual excesses of the moon’s inhabitants. In The Excursion to the Fifteenth Century, his egotism, opportunism and dishonesty are set against the ideals of uncompromising Hussite warriors fighting for God’s truth. Janáček’s portrait of an ordinary Czech remains topical even after a century, while this performance is led by Jaroslav Březina alongside other leading Czech singers and features the spacious acoustics and colourful sound of the Rudolfinum.