Katja Kabanova

In the organizer's words:

Opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček
based on the drama "The Thunderstorm" by Alexander Ostrowski

Janáček's opera Katja Kabanova with its eponymous heroine tells of claustrophobic confinement and attempted emancipation from strict moral laws. A small town on the Volga, a garden door that is always locked and secret night-time meetings - the supposed idyll soon turns out to be an environment in which the freedom-loving Katya becomes incapable of living. Katya, who is trapped in an unhappy marriage and the morals of the late 19th century, lives under one roof with her weak-willed husband Tichon and her despotic mother-in-law Kabanicha. When Tichon is sent on a journey by Kabanicha, Katja finds herself alone. She confides her desire for freedom and her secret infatuation with the merchant's son Boris only to her foster daughter Varvara. In the face of her traditional socialization, Katja is flooded with feelings of guilt and thus stands as a timeless victim of the patriarchal corset for all those women who come up against rigid boundaries in their attempts at emancipation.

Janáček masterfully interprets this claustrophobic confinement musically until it finally breaks through in a thunderstorm of sound as a mirror of Katja's state of mind. Janáček thus condenses Alexander Ostrowski's drama The Thunderstorm into a highly tragic, oppressive portrait of a young woman whose attempted escape from convention leads to suicide in the waters of the Volga.

Christiane Pohle, who already directed Operation Abendsonne at the Staatstheater Kassel, and Moritz Gnann explore Janáček's special linguistic melody and depth of feeling together as a production in the classical stage space before the space stage is set up again in the second half of the season.