Word: brno
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Down came the technological slogans in the square of Brno, Czechoslovakia (pop. 365,000). Up went huge posters of an intense-looking, white-haired man who could be a commanding commissar but who, in Brno at least, is more venerated than any socialist leader: Czech Composer Leoš Janáček. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of its composer's death and the 125th of his birth, Brno has opened a yearlong Janacek celebration, beginning with 27 musical events in a two-week-long gala festival. Students, soldiers and scores of foreign scholars jammed six concert halls...
...residents of Brno promote Janacek's work as hard as they play down his life-a chronicle so scandalous that, after 50 years, Brno still blushes and changes the subject when anyone mentions it. A choir director, conductor and organ teacher, Janacek at age 27 married one of his students, 16-year-old Zdenka Schulz, and lived unhappily ever after. Despite two children, Janacek humiliated his wife with his spectacular philandering. In less amorous moments, he found time to compose three minor operas and The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, a light, satirical tale about a flight...
Gathered at the Brno festival was a formidable array of 2,860 performers...
Much of the talent was from Czechoslovakia: the Brno State Theater, which originally staged most of Janáček's operas; the Brno State Philharmonic; the Czech Philharmonic; scores of folk singers and choirs. The Czech Philharmonic, one of the grander Old World orchestras, offered a smoothed-out, spruced-up version of the composer's music, while the more regional Brno orchestra left the burr in Janáček's rough edges. Lacking singers of international caliber, the Brno ensemble fared poorly in such star vehicles as The Makropoulos Affair. But Mr. Brou...
Ironically, the hottest tickets in town were to Janáček's three weak operas (Šárka, The Beginning of a Romance, Fate), collectors' items so rarely performed or recorded that they virtually had to be heard in Brno...