The Adventures of Mr Broucek

Published Monday 12 October 2009 at 13:15 by George Hall

Mr Broucek - his name translates as Mr Beetle - was a kind of average Czech man in the street dreamt up by novelist Svatopluk Cech. After staging his first great opera, Jenufa, in 1904, Janacek spent a decade trying to turn two of Mr Broucek’s adventures - the first to the moon, the second to 15th-century Prague - into an opera. Innumerable librettists worked on the piece and the result, unveiled in 1920, still has awkward corners - the 15th-century episode includes endless discussion about religious factions that seems pretty arcane to a contemporary British audience. But the score - luminously attractive in lunar mode, warlike in Prague — comes up fresh as paint as conducted by Martin Andre and with Opera North’s chorus and orchestra on splendid form.

The show also benefits from clever and stylish designs by Alex Lowde, who conjures up a particularly witty moon scene - the production links the period of the Apollo missions with the crushing of the Prague Spring by Soviet forces in 1968 - and from intelligent and unfailingly skilful direction from John Fulljames, surely the leading UK opera director of his generation.

Opera North fields a fine cast, too, most of them tripling up as Moon people and both ancient and modern inhabitants of Prague, with John Graham-Hall tirelessly determined as the flummoxed, cowardly Broucek. Well worth catching in Leeds or on tour.