April 09, 2008 | aktuálně.cz
Prague - The story of Czech politician Milada Horáková and the show
trial the led to her execution in 1950 has been recreated for the stage
a second time. On Wednesday the opera “Zítra se bude...” premiered at
the Kolowrat chamber.
Music for the opera was written by Aleš Březina, who also worked with Jiří Nekvasil on the libretto. Soňa Červená will play the lead role, which, it is said, was written for her “body and voice”, as a woman who herself experienced communist persecution.
After Červená’s husband left for the West, she was put on trial and her mother was imprisoned and eventually died after some days in Pankrac prison. Červená later left Czechoslovkia through East Berlin. She went on to became a successful singer and worked with Robert Wilson, for example.
“The fate of Milada Horáková is absolutely exceptional in its message - it is stark in the monstrosity seen in the staged judicial process,” says Březina.
As Jiří Heřman, the National Theater’s opera director, explains, “the opera’s main character” isn’t the national-socialist politician, but rather the trial against her. Soňa Červená will act as a guide for the audience, sometimes playing the role of Milada Horáková, and at other times the prosecutor and commentator.
Červená will be accompanied by contra tenor Jan Mikušek, the Kühnův children’s choir, the Canti de Praga chamber choir and the PurPur instrumental group. Marko Ivanović wil conduct.
Work on the opera started using authentic materials including radio and television recordings, transcripts of the trial and references in the press. Both authors emphasize Horáková’s humility and conciliatory nature in contrast to the hysteria and stupidity of the prosecution and the entire judicial machinery.
According to Březina, the whole trial was deliberately created as a piece of theater, using all the tools available to mass media at the time. The aim was to scare and forcibly unify “the working people”.
Prosecutors are acted out by child signers-pioneers; during the opera-trial, lyrics by Jan Vodňanský and Jan Zábrana are heard, along with Pavel Kohout’s famous period lyrics, which have been slightly amended. Kohout was the inspiration for the title of the opera.
The creators also put Milada Horáková’s farewell letter to music. This letter was kept secret by the state until 1990 when it was finally delivered to the addressee.
Březina’s past work with Soňa Červená includes the melodrama A-ha!, which was based on texts written by one of the authors of the Red Seven Cabaret, which was founded by the singer’s father.
The famous trail inspired Karel Steigerwald to write the play “Horáková-Gottwald”, which was staged until recently at the still-unreconstructed LaFabrika. Two years ago film maker Martin Vadas created a seven-hour filmed recording of the trial.
Future performances will take place on April 14, 20 and 24 and on May 6 and 13.