Katja Kaba­nova

In the backwater of Kalinov, disaster hangs in the air like the clouds in the sky. Katja Kabanova is also aware of the tension lurking ahead of the storm – a fateful storm of emotions for which Katja feels unprepared. She is consumed by a hopeless passion: continuing an illicit affair with Boris, who is entirely different from her weak-willed husband Tichon. But how long can this love liberate her from the bigoted household ruled over by her cold-hearted mother-in-law? When the storm finally breaks, Katja makes a momentous decision…

His Katja is “such a gentle soul that just a light breeze would blow her away, never mind the thunderstorm descends upon her,” Leoš Janáček remarked in a letter to his lover Kamila Stösslová and went on to add that his story was “full of music from the bottom of my heart.” Because: “it was a picture of you that I saw in Katja Kabanova when I was composing the opera.” These dramatic events are staged by the director Tatjana Gürbaca, who returns to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein after her successes with Strauss’s ‘Salome’ and ‘Arabella’.