The Leoš Janáček Foundation has undertaken to initiate and coordinate a series of events upon the 150th anniversary of Janáček’s birth and the 100th anniversary of the world premiere of his opera Jenůfa. Last year they sent out notifications and invitations to opera companies, concert organizers, and music festivals; many have responded to their letters. Soon the Foundation will open up a website which will provide information on upcoming Janáček events. They have kindly asked all who intend to celebrated the jubilee of the most important Czech composer of the 20th century to send them all reliable information at janacek-nadace@janacek-nadace.cz so they can post it on the website. Another clear detailed website, provided by the Janáček Theatre in Brno of the present details for the festival, as well as more biographical information about the composer, as well as many illustrations of the original scores of the operas can be viewed via Janáček Brno 2004 Jubilee.

The music festival Janáček's Brno 2004 will commemorate two anniversaries linked with the life of Leos Janáček, great Moravian, Czech and, undoubtedly, also European and world composer. In 2004 we will celebrate the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth as well as the hundredth anniversary of the first night of the composer's internationally most renown opera Jenůfa which took place on 21 January 1904 in Brno.

The festival will take place on the initiative of citizens and representatives of cultural institutions of the city of Brno, the city with which Janáček's life was closely connected. The city of Brno has decided to support the initiative as a special event complementing the annual International Music Festival Moravian Autumn where the celebrations of Janáček's jubilee year will continue.

The main organizer of the festival 'Janáček's Brno 2004' is the National Theatre in Brno, particularly its Janáček-Opera which will participate in the festival artistically. The dramaturgical core of the festival will consist in presenting all Janáček's operas, which will be complemented by performances of some of Janáček's chamber music pieces (string quartets, The Diary of One Who Disappeared) and symphonic works (Taras Bulba, The Danube, Glagolitic Mass). During the festival an exhibition on Janáček life and works will be opened and a musicological conference on Janáček will take place.


The programme of the Festival

The festival will see performances of the top Czech artistic ensembles as well as various foreign ensembles and soloists. The festival will be opened on 21 January 2004 with the first night of a new production of Jenufa performed by the Janáček-Opera Brno, directed by David Pountney, which is being prepared in cooperation with the State Opera, Vienna. This first night will take place on the day of the hundredth anniversary of the first night of Jenufa in Brno.

The festival which is being prepared by a number of leading representatives of artistic, cultural and political life should become an event not only of regional but, due to its dramaturgy and artistic level, also of European importance. The participation in the festival honorary committee has been promised by the conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, leading promoter of Janáček's works in the world, the singer Gabriela Benackova, or the musicologist Professor John Tyrrell (whose biography of the composer will be released during 2004), renowned researcher on Janáček. The festival will be a unique celebration of Janáček's works which belong to the most valuable pieces of the European cultural heritage.


Honorary Presidium of the Janáček Jubilee Year
So far the following people have agreed to take part:

Libuše Domanínská, opera singer, Prague
Guy Erismann, president, Mouvement Janáček, Paris
Marion von Hartlieb, director, Universal Edition, Vienna
Stanislav Juránek, district administrator of South Moravia region
Jakob Knaus, president, Leoš Janáček-Gesselschaft, Bern
Sir Charles Mackerras,
conductor, president of The Dvořák Society for Czech and Slovak Music, London
Graham Melville-Mason,
chairman of The Dvořák Society for Czech and Slovak Music, London
Peter Toperczer, rector, Academy of Music Arts, Prague
Evžen Tošenovský, district administrator of Moravian Silesia region
Professor John Tyrrell, Professorial Research Fellow at Cardiff University
Čestmír Vlček, mayor, city of Ostrava
Jiří Vysloužil, musicologist, Brno
Jiří Zlatuška, rector, Masaryk University, Brno


The Czech National Bank will issue a silver memorial coin for the Janáček anniversary (April 2004)

Janáček Memorial in Brno
The Leoš Janáček Foundation has signed a lease agreement for the garden house near the former organ school in Brno where Janáček lived from 1910 until his death. The house, in which the Moravian Regional Museum has established its Memorial, will be closed to the public from 1 August 2002 so renovations may be carried out. The Memorial is scheduled to reopen in 2004.

Moravian Autumn 2004
Intensive work has begun on the program for this traditional fall festival, which has regularly commemorated previous Janáček anniversaries. It should include compositions by Janáček and Dvořák (on the 100th anniversary of his death) as well as other world composers connected in various ways with the legacy of Leoš Janáček.