Opera that might make you think of the coronavirus pandemic – Jenufa by Leos Janacek staged for Hong Kong Arts Festival screening

The stage for the second act of Theatre National Brno’s production of Jenufa looks uncannily like a quarantine hotel, though the design predates the pandemic

Jenufa is one of two Janacek operas offered for free streaming to Arts Festival patrons; the other, The Cunning Little Vixen, has the most unlikely roots

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A scene from Leos Janacek’s Jenufa staged by the National Theatre Brno that may bring to mind a quarantine hotel, with its four identical rooms, each with a sole occupant who’s in pain. Photo: Patrik Borecky

Published: 3:45pm, 7 Mar 2021Updated: 3:45pm, 7 Mar 2021

The audience for the National Theatre Brno’s recent production of Leos Janacek’s opera Jenufa, being screened as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival’s celebration of Czech music this year, might be forgiven for thinking that the staging was inspired by the coronavirus pandemic.

As the curtain rises for the second act, we see four square rooms, all in a line, uncannily like the next-door rooms of a quarantine hotel.

The furnishings in each are identical: two chairs, a table, a basket of fruit, a cabinet, with a door behind leading to a bed. And in each, at the beginning, there is a maximum of one person, each alone in his or her pain.

The production, directed by Martin Glaser, was created well before anyone could imagine how coronavirus put so many of us in our separate rooms. Yet it would not be surprising, the theatre’s artistic director Jiri Hefman says in a Zoom interview, if many people watching this interpreted it to incorporate their own story, which might include their experiences of being in this pandemic.

A scene from Leos Janacek’s opera Jenufa, staged by the National Theatre Brno for the Hong Kong Arts Festival 2021. The opera has not been staged in Hong Kong for more than two decades. Photo: Patrik Borecky

“I have always found it fascinating that every one of us can find that music has our own story in it,” he says. “And that it says something different to each person who watches it and listens to it.”