DVD + Blu-Ray:
Janácek: Jenůfa from Staatsoper Berlin

“Simon Rattle revs up the Staatskapelle with a passion as if he had to fill a melodrama by Giacomo Puccini with bursting sound life” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

Leoš Janáček’s third opera, with its echoes of folk music from the composer’s native Moravia, was his first real success and got the name “Moravian national opera”. Besides this, Janáček’s music has a special quality: while it explores psychological extremes leading to violence and infanticide and lays bare characters’ emotions in an unsparing manner, no one is judged. Jenufa is still Janácek’s most successful and most often performed opera, and the Berlin premiere at the Staatsoper in 1924 brought the work its final breakthrough on German stages. This performance from Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden is “artistically unsurpassable. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, the cast [...], secondly: the direction [...], thirdly: Simon Rattle, the Staatskapelle and the chorus of the Staatsoper” (BR Klassik). “A beguiling mixture of speaking articulation and tonal roundness.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Original title Janácek: Jenůfa from Staatsoper Berlin
Genre Opera
Recording location Staatsoper Unter den Linden, February 2021
Duration 126 mins
Production Company A co-production of rbb, BR, 3sat, UNITEL and Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Composer Leoš Janácek
Orchestra / Band Staatskapelle Berlin
Conductor Simon Rattle
Choir Staatsopernchor
Chorus Master Martin Wright
Stage Director Damiano Michieletto
Soloist Camilla Nylund, Evelyn Herlitzius, Stuart Skelton, Ladislav Elgr, Hanna Schwarz