Opera North

Osud

Janácek’s rarely performed opera Osud tells the story of a composer, Živný, who has written an autobiographical opera about his obsessive, tormented love for Míla, with whom he has a young son. The last act is unfinished, however: the opera cannot be concluded until it has been lived.

Despite its concision, Osud has an expansive lyricism that flowers more readily than in Janácek’s terser late operas, while evoking the cadence and rhythm of Czech speech. The score glows with what his biographer John Tyrrell describes as ‘some of his most incandescent music’.

L’Enfant Et Les Sortilèges

Ravel’s captivating ‘lyric fantasy’, L’enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Magic Spells), composed to a libretto by the French novelist Colette, is dazzling, witty and surreal in equal measure.

A young boy argues with his mother, refuses to do his homework and flies into a tantrum, destroying the objects in the room around him. But in this childhood fable of enchantment, everything around the boy comes magically to life. Outside in the garden, he is also shunned by the animals and plants he has tormented and hurt, until he is forgiven after helping an injured squirrel.

One of only two short operas composed by Ravel, L’enfant et les sortilèges is both a delightful, whimsical fantasy and a profoundly moving response to the generational trauma of war, witnessed by both composer and librettist. Its exquisite, innovative score is filled with jewel-like surprises, perfectly capturing and deftly characterising talking animals and magical nursery furniture alike.