The Adventures of Mr Brouček, Opera North

To a bewitching, shimmering prelude, a back-projected astronaut plants a Czech flag on the lunar surface. So begins one of those evenings where you skip out of the theatre grinning and promising yourself that you will buy tickets for all your opera-disdaining friends.

First performed in Prague in 1920, Brouček is the Cinderella among Janáček’s mature operas. Based on stories by the popular nationalist writer Svatopluk Čech about a drunken everyman, the opera had a troubled composition history. Janáček began writing the work in 1908, eventually finishing it in 1918, collaborating with several librettists along the way. The piece is consequently disjointed. In Act One, Brouček dreams of journeying to the moon and back, and in Act Two he imagines himself voyaging back in time to the 15th century. The two halves don’t quite gel, and perhaps the opera is best enjoyed as two linked one-acters.

However, the music is sublime, mature Janáček - mercurial and full of typically nagging ostinati figures. There are many passages of soaring orchestral wonderment: the voyage home from the moon, and the quiet end of Act One are magical, played here with security and conviction.

Mr Brouček is a shabby, shambling figure, always clutching his briefcase and dressed in a grey three-piece suit. John Graham-Hall’s height and spindly stature make him a compelling anti-hero and he stumbles around the stage with Tati-esque agility. Even watching him put on a pair of trousers is interesting. The scenes set on the moon are frequently hilarious, with costume designs alluding to Barbarella and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The English translation is lucid and witty. The moon-dwellers are flower-sniffing, vegetarian aesthetes, shunning Brouček after witnessing his determination to eat the pub sausages secreted in his briefcase. Etherea’s increasingly amorous pursuit of Brouček on the moon is a brilliantly choreographed evocation of Benny Hill and the Carry On films.

In Act Two things instantly take a slightly more serious turn with projected photographs of tank-filled Prague streets in August 1968. The curtain rises to reveal locals in the Vikárka bar are dressed like 1960s dissidents. Brouček, in the bar cellar, is interrupted by his creator Čech, before crawling through a tunnel to the year 1420, where he becomes unwittingly involved in the struggle to defend Prague against earlier European aggressors. Of course he turns out to be cowardly and is about to burned alive, before eventually waking up in a beer barrel back home. The closing minutes are a delightful musical shrug, as Brouček claims to have saved Prague from invaders before stumbling upstage.

There are so many things to commend in director John Fulljames's Opera North/Scottish Opera production. As well as simple, imaginative set designs from Alex Lowde, there is striking use of Finn Ross's video projections. As for the performances, I was won over by Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts’s Mazal/Starry Sky-Blue and Anne Sophie Duprels’s Málinka/Etherea, yet special mention must go to Claire Wilde as the Apprentice Waiter/Lunar Child Prodigy. The supporting cast take multiple roles and part of the fun is seeing how their characters are still recognisable across three different settings. Excellent, beefy chorus work, and Martin André’s conducting secures world-class playing from the Orchestra of Opera North. A must-see.

The Adventures of Mr Brouček is performed at the Grand Theatre in Leeds on 15, 17 and 23 October, then touring to Nottingham, Salford and Newcastle. Book here.