Read on for an interview with the Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša, who is set to become music director at the Royal Opera House for the 2025/26 season, after sharing the role with the current director, Antonio Pappano, for 2024/25. Jakub has already directed some acclaimed productions at the Royal Opera House, including Carmen by Bizet and Lohengrin by Wagner.
Jakub also appears twice at the 2024 BBC Proms. On Tuesday 27 August (Prom 49) he conducts the Czech Philharmonic in an all-Czech programme, featuring Dvořák's masterful Cello Concerto (with Anastasia Kobekina as soloist) and Josef Suk's raw, nakedly emotional Symphony No. 2, ‘Asrael’.
Then the next day, Jakub Hrůša and the Czech Philharmonic return with another all-Czech bill for Prom 50. This time you'll hear the marvellous Military Sinfonietta by the underrated female composer Vítězslava Kaprálová, plus Dvořák's Piano Concerto (with soloist Mao Fujita) and the rousing Glagolitic Mass by Leos Janáček. Joining conductor and orchestra for the latter are soloists including Corinne Winters (soprano), Bella Adamova (mezzo-soprano), David Butt Philip (tenor), Brindley Sherratt (bass), and Christian Schmitt (organ), plus the Prague Philharmonic Choir.
Elsewhere, Jakub has conducted a variety of international orchestras including the Czech Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia, and Rome's Santa Cecilia.
How are you enjoying your time at the Royal Opera House?
I am very excited indeed. Officially I am starting my tenure in 2025/26. The next season (2024/25) will be without a music director. However, I am going to lead a revival of the production of Leos Janáček’s Jenůfa, staged by Claus Guth - with a phenomenal cast, led by Corinne Winters and Karita Mattila. I have previously conducted Carmen and Lohengrin, so Jenůfa is a fantastic title with which to return to the Royal Opera House.
And what plans do you have for your tenure as director?
The Royal Opera House must continue to be the beacon of international and national operatic worlds, working on marvellous multifaceted titles with the best possible collaborators (directors, singers, stage designers, etcetera). Its repertoire will touch new horizons - reflecting my natural background mainly in the central-European music (German, Czech, Slavic in general), continuing to embrace Italian and French opera in an exemplary way, and continuing also to focus on British composers (such as Handel and Britten).
It must also perform contemporary pieces, and devote time and attention to education. Simply put, the Royal Opera House must engage with all those interested in this beautifully complex and rich art form - featuring all characters, backgrounds, and ethnicities - which opera has always been and will always be.
You're bringing plenty of Czech flavour to the Proms this year...
Oh yes, and I'm very much looking forward to it! Firstly, I am happy to perform our pieces because they belong to the absolute best of music written at the time of their composers’ lives. I don’t need to mention too specifically Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass - one of the most original pieces of the mass (or even cantata) genre ever written, and - I feel - born to be performed in the Royal Albert Hall (with its splendid space and organ). With us: the amazing Prague Philharmonic Choir.
Another composition I cannot wait to perform with my beloved colleagues in the Czech Philharmonic is Josef Suk’s symphony Asrael - for me the peak of the symphonic genre of the time of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, absolutely equal to them in its quality. The Czech national orchestra, as the group of the best Czech orchestral musicians, will help me, I hope, to give these performances a touch of stylistic exclusivity. We are all really looking forward to it.
Dvořák’s concerti with our beautiful soloists will add to the popularity of the programmes, so very much wanted by the general audiences. And I should not forget the Military Sinfonietta by Vítězslava Kaprálová, a superbly talented female composer of the first half of the 20th century. A student and close confidante of the composer Bohusłav Martinů, Kaprálová was also a very skilful conductor, and got the right attention and full dedication of the exclusively male orchestras in the past (including in London) in a way we have seen more fully only in the last decades. The greatest pity that she died so early due to her fragile physical constitution.
You have worked with a variety of international orchestras. Have you noticed differences in the way these various orchestras work?
Obviously - there are huge differences. I always hesitate to describe the sounds of the orchestras in words, though - it’s a tricky business. Everyone should listen with their own ears (endless recordings are available) and then characterize (or just feel) the differences on their own.
What makes the Czech Philharmonic special is above all the national identity of the orchestra - almost 100% Czech, and on top level, with special affinity to the local repertoire (not just Czech music but also Mahler, for example), and recently escalating the quality of their playing in a wide range of musical styles. The orchestra is still very recognizable.
But my home is Bamberg, with whom I am resident at the Edinburgh Festival this year - and in fact this orchestra is a wider family with the Czechs as regards history: before its foundation in 1946, the Bamberg musicians came to Germany from Czech lands as those who had lived in Bohemia as representatives of the, at those times very present, German-speaking culture. Eventually, they formed the wonderful German Philharmonic in Prague (playing both operas and concerts).
In the spirit of the years after World War II, the Bohemian Germans were (rather controversially) expelled from the country, and those passionate musicians having been influencing Bohemian musical life for many decades decided to persevere and form the new orchestra in the welcoming city of Bamberg in Franconia (about a 3.5-hour drive from Prague).
It’s no random accident that the Bamberg Symphony will join the Czech Philharmonic (so two orchestras where I hold a title) in performing Mahler’s Seventh Symphony in September: it will take place very near to the place of the original premiere of this masterpiece (Prague's former Exhibition Hall). This will be a huge event in the autumn - an idea I had a long time ago, finally coming to life.
These two orchestras are very different in many ways, but they share a beautifully rich and lively string sound (my aim is always a vocal legato), natural phrasing of the woodwinds and great care in the powerful but round sound of the brass. I am really privileged to be able to work with these two extraordinary ensembles.
Is there an orchestra you’ve most enjoyed working with?
Besides Bamberg, the Czech Philharmonic and lately obviously the phenomenal Royal Opera House orchestra (groups I am mentioning with pride), you must excuse me from this answer!
The whole beauty of my mission of working with various orchestras is to enjoy the potential, quality and momentum, the personal and professional aspect with every single orchestra I conduct. In a way, my biography reflects precisely which orchestras I love working with and therefore coming back to (even if so, many are missing there) - should I not be happy with them, I wouldn’t be coming back.
And anyway: how to compare between large and chamber orchestras, orchestras playing concerts and operas, orchestras in Europe, America and Asia? I cannot answer, I love my colleagues too much. That's the incredible diversity of cultural experience!
