Separate Trips

The late 1960s were very different depending on where you experienced them. In the United States it was the time of flower power and free love, of Monterey Pop and Woodstock (although also of Altamont); in mainland Europe, however, the student uprisings of 1968 led to a brief but intense moment when it seemed that a socialist revolution was genuinely within reach. These opposing versions of the same turbulent period featured prominently in the new production of Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr Brouček that opened recently at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Between the lively staging of Robert Carsen and the generous musical direction of Sir Simon Rattle, the evening offered a vigorously entertaining  journey through one of Janáček’s most curious and least-known operas.

Mr Brouček was the major operatic work written in the two decades that…