In the backwater of Kalinov, disaster hangs in the air like the clouds in the sky. Katja Kabanova is also aware of the tension lurking ahead of the storm – a fateful storm of emotions for which Katja feels unprepared. She is consumed by a hopeless passion: continuing an illicit affair with Boris, who is entirely different from her weak-willed husband Tichon. But how long can this love liberate her from the bigoted household ruled over by her cold-hearted mother-in-law? When the storm finally breaks, Katja makes a momentous decision…

His Katja is “such a gentle soul that just a light breeze would blow her away, never mind the thunderstorm descends upon her,” Leoš Janáček remarked in a letter to his lover Kamila Stösslová and went on to add that his story was “full of music from the bottom of my heart.” Because: “it was a picture of you that I saw in Katja Kabanova when I was composing the opera.” These dramatic events are staged by the director Tatjana Gürbaca, who returns to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein after her successes with Strauss’s ‘Salome’ and ‘Arabella’. read less