KAFKA’S LETTER TO HIS FATHER

“Trtíkova opera Kafkův dopis otci je intimní scénická báseň, hudebně i jevištně velmi krásná a působivá, oslovující diváky podstatnými otázkami.” (Radmila Hrdinová, novinky.cz)

About

Kafka´s Letter to His Father is an ambient chamber opera in two acts based on a letter written by Franz Kafka to his father in 1919. In this correspondence, Kafka attempted to describe the causes and circumstances of their mutual discord, and explain his own life uncertainties and anxieties stemming from this conflict. The new opera, commissioned for the Festival, explores Kafka’s childhood and adolescence, marked by the fear of his despotic and seemingly all-powerful and omnipresent father. Kafka cannot, nor does he wish to, conform to his father’s ideals of masculinity and social roles, and thus resists them in his own way. Kafka finds personal freedom in literary creation, and through literature, manages to escape his father’s authority. Regardless, his father constantly intrudes into his work and is – nonetheless covertly – its source and subject.