Intimateletters

A dramatic retelling of the passionate illicit love affair that resulted in one of the finest and most passionate string quartets of the 20th century.

It was not until 1916 that Leos Janacek’s opera Jenufa began to convince the Prague public that he was more than a provincial organist. The extraordinary work that poured out over the next decade forced them to acknowledge his genius. A year after his Jenufa triumph, unhappily married, he fell in love with Kamila Stösslova, a 35-year-old married woman with 2 children, who became the subject of the String Quartet “Intimate Letters”, which he dedicated to her. Their affair lasteduntil his death in 1928.

In this dramatic recreation Timothy West reads the composer’s love letters – access to which was restricted for over forty years - interwoven with the movements of the composer’s magnificent and lyrical 2nd string quartet.