Kapr Code

Jan Kapr is considered a central figure of musical modernism at the time of the Cold War. The fate of the Czech composer is thus closely linked to the history of socialism. While the progressive artist was awarded the Stalin Prize as late as 1951, his uncompromising work soon fell out of favor. The music was banned and henceforth played only abroad. 

Kapr Code is a biographical opera. Lucie Králová’s approach to Jan Kapr’s eventful, contradictory life follows a libretto based on the artist’s personal, previously unpublished archive. From music and photographs, tapes, letters, notes, and amateur films, from fragments of police reports, political writings and love letters, a piece for 17 opera singers is created. In this completely documentary staging, the creation is revealed as a political act. The director deliberately leaves the gaps in Kapr’s biography open by strictly using only Kapr’s estate. The original cinematic staging allows traces to be glimpsed of who else Kapr might have been. 

(Ursula Pfander)