With one foot in the world of opera, the other in musicals, and an idealist’s belief in the power of theatre, Australian Barrie Kosky is one of today’s most sought after directors. He has the ability to draw out the pure essence of each piece and convey it radiantly to the public. This year’s Antonín Dvořák Prize thus goes to this artist, whose masterful grasping of music extends to many of the most beautiful Czech operas: Rusalka, The Cunning Little Vixen, From the House of the Dead, and, most recently, Katya Kabanova. This latest production, conducted by Jakub Hrůša at the 2023 Salzburg Festival, won the 2024 Gramophone Awards. Kosky is a showman through and through, as the New York Times has written, yet one who also sees into the depth of things, utterly disregarding divisions between so-called high and low art. He served as the director of Komische Oper Berlin for ten years and currently works at the Bavarian State Opera and festivals in Aix-en-Provence, Bayreuth and Glyndebourne. Kosky’s multifaceted personality is mirrored in the programme of the concert, which features Dvořák and Janáček in the first half and musical composer superstars Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein in the second.

Barrie Kosky
Director

“…a showman through and through, who operates with a young idealist’s belief in the power of theater and a brazen disregard for divisions between so-called high and low art”

The New York Times

Barrie Kosky is one of the most internationally sought-after stage directors of today, presenting productions all over the world. From 2012-2022, he was Intendant and Chefregisseur of the Komische Oper Berlin. By the end of his first season, the Komische Oper was voted "Opera House of the Year" by Opernwelt magazine, and Kosky has gone on to be credited with its eclectic programming of canonical Opera, Musical Theatre, and Weimar-era operetta.

His work at the Komische Oper Berlin has included The Magic Flute (co-directed with 1927), which has been seen by over a quarter of a million people on three continents, The Monteverdi Trilogy, Ball at the Savoy, Eugene Onegin, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Rigoletto, La Belle Hélène, Moses und Aron, La bohème, Rusalka, Le Grand Macabre, West Side Story, Pelléas et Mélisande, Semele, The Bassarids, Die Perlen von Cleopatra, Anatevka, and Candide among others.

Barrie Kosky has directed opera productions for the Bayerische Staatsoper (Die Schweigsame Frau, Agrippina, The Fiery Angel, Der Rosenkavalier, The Cunning Little Vixen), the Salzburg Festival (Orphée aux Enfers, Kat’a Kabanovna), Glyndebourne Festival Opera (Saul, Les Dialogues des Carmélites), Festival Aix-en-Provence (Falstaff, Coq D’Or), Oper Frankfurt (Dido and Aeneas/Bluebeard's Castle, Salome, Carmen, Hercules), Opera Zurich (La Fanciulla del West, The Stigmatized, Macbeth, Boris Gudonov), Opéra National de Paris (Prince Igor), and Royal Opera House Covent Garden (The Nose, Agrippina, Carmen). He has also presented his productions at the Los Angeles Opera, Teatro Real Madrid, Gran Liceu Barcelona, Vienna Staatsoper, Het National Opera Amsterdam, English National Opera, Oper Graz, Theater Basel, Aalto Theater Essen, Staatsoper Hannover, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Schauspielhaus Frankfurt, and is a regular guest at the Edinburgh International Festival.

His awards include the Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production for Castor and Pollux (English National Opera), Best Director at the 2014 International Opera Awards, Best Opera House (Komische Oper Berlin) at the 2015 International Opera Awards, the 2015 Gold Iffland Medal from the Berliner Theater Club, and the 2016 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Opera and Music Theatre for Saul (also nominated for a 2016 International Opera Award). In 2016, he was named Director of the Year by Opernwelt and in 2017, Kosky’s production of Saul won six out of seven categories at the Helpmann Awards, including Best Opera and Best Opera Direction. In 2018, Kosky’s Bayreuth Festival production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was announced as Production of the Year by Opernwelt. In 2020, he was the recipient of a Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award, in recognition of his unique and influential contribution to the Australian Arts world.

Barrie will return to the Komische Oper Berlin as a guest, with several new productions in 23/24. Elsewhere this season, new productions include Die Fledermaus for Bayerische Staatsoper, Die Lustige Witwe for Opera Zurich, Il Trittico for Het National Opera Amsterdam, Cosi Fan Tutte for Wiener Staatsoper, and a new original double bill for Aix Festival. The upcoming seasons will also see Kosky return to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for a new cycle of Wagner’s Ring, starting this season with Das Rheingold in September 2023.

Born in Melbourne, Kosky was Artistic Director of Gilgul Theatre Company (1990–1997), Artistic Director of the 1996 Adelaide Festival, and from 2001-2005, he was co-Artistic Director of the Vienna Schauspielhaus.

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In 1994, world-famous conductor Jiří Bělohlávek and a group of talented young musicians founded the Prague Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra. Its international success and expanding repertoire led the orchestra to change its name, first to the PKF–Prague Philharmonia, and now, in the 2024/2025 season, to the Prague Philharmonia.

Over the last 30 years, the orchestra has gained esteem throughout the music world for its characteristic sound as well as for the focus of its repertoire – music by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Its core repertoire also includes music by Antonín Dvořák, Bedřich Smetana and their successors, as well as French and German composers ranging from Robert Schumann to Johannes Brahms and Maurice Ravel. 20th-century compositions and new contemporary works are an integral part of its repertoire. The Prague Philharmonia retains its chamber character as well as its passionate commitment and attention to detail, although today its size places it between a chamber ensemble and a small symphony orchestra.

Since its founding, the orchestra has been led by a number of renowned chief conductors, each of whom contributed to the development of the Prague Philharmonia’s distinctive sound. After Jiří Bělohlávek, Kaspar Zehnder assumed the role of chief conductor in 2005, followed by Jakub Hrůša in 2008. Since the beginning of the 2015/2016 season the orchestra has been led by French conductor Emmanuel Villaume.

The Prague Philharmonia has also performed with internationally famous soloists including Julian Rachlin, Martha Argerich, Yefim Bronfman, András Schiff, Gil Shaham, Isabelle Faust, Emmanuel Pahud, Luciano Pavarotti, Diana Damrau, Anna Netrebko, Plácido Domingo, Gautier Capuçon, Maxim Vengerov, Mischa Maisky, Juan Diego Flórez, Jonas Kaufmann and many others.

The orchestra is regularly invited to international music festivals (BBC Proms, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, MITO SettembreMusica, Prague Spring, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden) and gives concerts at leading world venues (Berliner Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Gasteig Munich, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Royal Opera House Muscat in Oman, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre in Kuwait, Festspiel Baden-Baden, Seoul Arts Center, Musikverein and Théâtre Champs-Elysées, among others).

The Prague Philharmonia has recorded more than 90 compact discs for prestigious international and Czech music labels (Deutsche Grammophon, Warner Classics, Sony Classical, Decca, EMI, Harmonia Mundi and Supraphon). Its recordings have garnered numerous prizes: the Gold Record RAC Canada in 2000, the Harmonie Award in 2001 and the Diapason d’Or in 2007. Its CD Héroïque with Bryan Hymel was nominated for the International Opera Award in 2016, and its CD Bohemian Rhapsody with Gábor Boldoczki was nominated for the International Classical Music Award (ICMA) in 2017. Its Ravel, Debussy & Bizet CD received excellent reviews from the London Sunday Times, Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine, which included it in its top 10 recordings of the week; its CD with acclaimed tenor Benjamin Bernheim for Deutsche Grammophon from November 2019 won the Opus Klassik Award and numerous accolades in the international press (e.g. the Diapason d’Or and Choc de Classica).

The orchestra has recently toured Japan, Germany, Italy, Turkey, France and Taiwan, and performed at the Musikverein in Vienna. Its 2023 recording for Deutsche Grammophon with tenor Jonathan Tetelman was well received, as was its recording of Penderecki’s compositions with the flutist Stathis Karapanos (Warner Classics).

"But the real hero of the evening is the conductor, Marc Albrecht. (...) He knows exactly how to fully exploit the lush extremes of the score without losing the details; how to pull back the moments of whispering tenderness; how to hold his singers in the palm of his hand. The orchestra shows how much more subtlety and sophistication it can bring out in the right hands. The piece lives and breathes."

Financial Times, 04, May 2022

Marc Albrecht is one of the most exciting conductors of his generation. He is in demand internationally as a conductor of the German-Austrian late Romantic repertoire from Wagner and Strauss to Zemlinsky, Schreker and Korngold, and cultivates with conviction the entire spectrum from Mozart to contemporary music.

Albrecht’s work with the orchestras is rooted in a chamber music approach; he loves and knows how to utilise the infinite sound possibilities of the large symphony orchestra, whilst simultaneously always allowing the sound to blend with the intimacy of the chamber orchestra. Even in the densely orchestrated symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler, Albrecht succeeds in an astonishing way in making the structure clear and letting the music breathe. With Marc Albrecht, an analytical approach and emotional music-making go hand in hand.

His artistic work has been honoured numerous times. In October 2021, he was awarded the OPUS KLASSIK as Conductor of the Year for the recording of Zemlinsky's The Mermaid with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra; in 2020, he was appointed a "Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion" and received the Dutch National Opera's Prix d'Amis, two of the. most prestigious prizes in the Netherlands. In the same year, Marc Albrecht received another OPUS KLASSIK in the category "Best Opera Recording of the 20th/21st Century" for the DVD of Korngold's "The Miracle of Heliane" at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, released by NAXOS. He was named "Conductor of the Year" by the International Opera Awards in 2019 and the Dutch National Opera's 2017 production of Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" was nominated for a GRAMMY in the category "Best Opera Recording". In addition, in 2016 the Dutch National Opera was named Europe's "Opera House of the Year" during his tenure as chief conductor.

The Berliner Morgenpost wrote of the production in 2018: "But the real miracle of the evening happens in the pit. Marc Albrecht savours Korngold's intoxication of sound for a good three hours, (...). He devotes himself with great pleasure to the details that emerge from the waves of sound, uncovering layers only to let them merge with each other again straight away". An exhilarating interpretation" was the 2020 Tagesspeigel's verdict on the recording of the 2020 Tagesspiegel on the recording of Zemlinsky's "The Mermaid", and a 2019 BBC Proms Bachtrack review praised: "Albrecht [...] transported me to an ominous landscape the likes of which I had never experienced before in this music. By carefully highlighting solos or sections and adjusting the balance naturally, he not only did justice to the exuberant acoustics of the Royal Albert Hall: he exploited them to the full. [...] Albrecht's conducting tore [the music] from the page."

In the 2023/24 season, selected guest conducting engagements took Marc Albrecht to the opera houses of Berlin, Cologne, Rome and Dresden; he also made guest appearances with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Zürich, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Orquesta de València, Orquestra Gulbenkian and the Taiwan Philharmonic, among others.

Soprano Kateřina Kněžíková is one of the most promising singers of her generation. Beside her operatic appearances, she increasingly engages in concert performances, which have earned her acclaim both domestically and abroad. In her core repertoire, she focuses on Antonín Dvořák, Bohuslav Martinů and Leoš Janáček as well as on song music. She received the 2018 Classic Prague Award for the best chamber performance and the 2019 Thalia Award for an exceptional theatrical performance in the production of Bohuslav Martinů’s Juliette (The Key to Dreams) at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in Ostrava.

She is a graduate of the Prague Conservatoire and the Faculty of Music and Dance of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Since 2006, she has been a permanent soloist with the National Theatre Opera in Prague, where she currently appears in productions of Rusalka, Così fan tutte, Carmen, Jenůfa, The Bartered Bride and The Cunning Little Vixen, among others.

She has made guest performances at numerous local and international festivals (Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Prague Spring International Music Festival, Dvořák Prague International Music Festival, Smetana’s Litomyšl, etc.). She has worked with leading orchestras (BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony, Camerata Salzburg, Czech Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, etc.), and a pleiad of brilliant conductors (Jiří Bělohlávek, Serge Baudo, Plácido Domingo, Asher Fisch, Manfred Honeck, Domingo Hindoyan, Jakub Hrůša, Oksana Lyniv, Tomáš Netopil, John Nelson, Petr Popelka and Robin Ticciati).

In 2021, she released her first solo album Phidylé on the Supraphon label, which was named as Editor’s Choice and The Best Classical Album of 2021 by Gramophone magazine and won the “Vocal” category in the prestigious BBC Magazine Music Awards. Her recordings Fantasie and K2 were issued by the Radioservis label. In September 2024, she released the album Tag und Nacht with Jakub Hrůša and the Bamberg Symphony on the Supraphon label.

Mezzosoprano Jarmila Vantuchová has established herself both as an opera and concert singer. She also enjoys performing Baroque music. She regularly partners with distinguished Baroque ensembles such as Solamente Naturali, Musica Aeterna and Collegium 1704. She has collaborated with the Czech Philharmonic, Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava, Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Zlín, Moravian Philharmonic Olomouc, the Brno Philharmonic, the Czech Virtuosi orchestra, L'Armonia Terrena, the Slovak Philharmonic, Košice State Philharmonic Orchestra, etc. She has performed a number of roles at the National Theatre Brno: the Mayor's Wife in Janáček's opera Jenůfa, Polina in Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades as well as Kosinska in Janáček’s opera Fate, which was staged by renowned director Robert Carsen for the National Theatre Brno and 2020 Janáček Festival. Subsequently, she performed the role of Third Lady in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute and Aljeja in Janáček’s opera From the House of the Dead, which was directed by Jiří Heřman and conducted by Jakub Hrůša. She debuted at the Slovak National Theatre as Kate in Dvořák’s opera The Devil and Kate. In Prague she has appeared in Zdeněk Troška’s production of Rusalka as the Kitchen Boy and as Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. She may currently be seen as the Second Nymph in Rusalka at the National Theatre. Her greatest achievements include her debut at the 2022 Salzburg Festival as Varvara in Janáček’s opera Katya Kabanova, directed by Barrie Kosky. She has been invited to collaborate with orchestras such as the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Warsaw Philharmonic and the Bamberg Symphony. Jarmila Vantuchová’s recording of Habanera from the opera Carmen appeared as a remix in the final episode of the second season of the American series Emily in Paris on Netflix.

Peter Berger studied voice at the Košice Conservatory and the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrice under Eva Blahová. He has also taken part in master classes led by Peter Dvorský, Ryszard Karczykowski, Dagmar Livorová, Gabriella Imre, Vladimír Chmelo and Astrea Amaduzzi. He took first place in the Mikuláš Schneider-Trnavský International Vocal Competition in Trnava and was a semi-finalist in the Belvedere Singing Competition in Vienna. He was granted the Literary Fund Award for his portrayal of the Prince in Dvořák’s Rusalka, of Pinkerton in Puccini’s opera Madam Butterfly and of Laca in Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa.

Alongside performances in Czech and Slovak theatres, he has taken part in productions in opera houses around the world, such as the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Beijing Opera, Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Teatro Regio in Turin, Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Royal Opera House in Muscat, National Theatre in Tokyo, Teatro Municipal in Chile, Welsh National Opera in Cardiff, National Theatre in Split and the Danish Opera in Aarhus. He has also participated in major international festivals in e.g. Glyndebourne, Regensburg, Savonlinna and Wexford.

Since 2008, he has worked closely with the Janáček Opera in Brno and the National Theatre in Prague, where he has embodied a number of key roles (Rodolfo, Alfredo, Turiddu, Cavaradossi, Pinkerton, Don José, Werther, Dalibor, Prince, Jeník, Laca, Boris, Manolios, Skuratov and others). 

In international circles, he has long been a sought-after performer of the Czech romantic repertoire. He has participated in opera productions led by directors such as Robert Carsen, Calixto Bieito, Arnaud Bernard, Jiří Heřman, Paul Curran and Hugo de Ana, Stephen Medcalf, Willy Decker, Marek Weiss, Denis Krief and Michael Gieleta. This season he has also worked with directors David Pountney and David Radok. 

Peter Berger is regularly engaged by leading Czech and international orchestras. His most prominent concert and stage performances include gala concerts with Elena Obraztsova, Peter Dvorský, Edita Gruberová, Eva Urbanová, Gabriela Beňačková, Karita Mattila, along with concerts in Malta, Japan, Denmark, Spain, Latvia, Hungary, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Beijing.

He has performed under the leadership of conductors such as Tomáš Hanus, Jakub Hrůša, Jaroslav Kyzlink, Leoš Svárovský, Ondrej Lenárd, Iván Fischer, Manfred Honeck, Ion Marin, Sir Mark Elder, Konstantin Chudovsky, Łukasz Borowicz, Friedrich Heider, Gabriele Ferro, Giacomo Sagripanti and many others.

The life journey of this actor, singer and songwriter has taken her to acting school in New York, her theatrical debut in the Old Vic in London’s East End, to Paris, and eventually to Berlin.

She won the Golden Curtain viewers’ prize as Berlin’s most beloved actress six times and received the B.Z. daily’s culture prize for her “exceptional radiance within the cultural landscape of Berlin”.

In 2022, she was selected to be artist-in-residence of the 30th Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau, which she opened with a production of THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS by Brecht/Weill. Later the same year, she performed in THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS at the Konzerthaus Berlin with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.

In March 2023 she premiered a glorious song recital featuring Kurt Weill’s songs accompanied by the Komische Oper Berlin orchestra titled “Mehrling! Kosky! Weill! … und mit morgen könnt ihr mich!“ (Mehrling! Kosky! Weill! … and tomorrow can go and hang itself!).

Currently, Katharine Mehrling is performing in a show about Bertolt Brecht called FREMDER ALS DER MOND (Stranger than the Moon) at the Berliner Ensemble.

The Spanish Hall is the largest ceremonial space of the Prague Castle and is located in the northern wing of the New Royal Palace. It was built at the beginning of the 17th century during the reign of Rudolf II, and its rich stucco decoration is one of the most advanced manifestations of Mannerism in Bohemia before the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War.