Opera North

Janacek took his inspiration for Katya Kabanova from several sources: a Russian play, The Storm; his admiration for Puccini’s Madama Butterfly; and above all, his own doomed love for a married woman.

Katya is a woman with a gentle soul and a passionate nature, drowning in a narrow-minded small-town society. She is married to Tichon, a weak man entirely under the thumb of his overbearing mother. Katya has caught the eye of the romantic Boris, and when her husband leaves on a business trip, temptation proves impossible to resist. Katya and Boris embark on a passionate affair. But when her husband returns, a storm breaks in Katya’s heart and mind. Overwhelmed by a sense of guilt, she feels compelled to confess her sin.

In Katya Kabanova, Janacek created one of opera’s authentic masterpieces, charting his heroine’s tragedy with profound compassion in wildly beautiful music that crackles with tension and barely suppressed eroticism.