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© Michal Fanta
Barbara Hannigan
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 June 2030 | ||||||
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Barbara Hannigan as singer and conductor of the Czech Philharmonic in the Czech premiere of her own fabled adaptation of Francis Poulenc’s opera La Voix humaine, featuring a live video screening.
Artist-in-Residence of the Prague Spring 2026 Barbara Hannigan is one of the most original figures in the sphere of classical music. With her typical courage and determination she sings and also conducts, she inspires the finest contemporary composers in their endeavours, and she creates unique projects which go far beyond the customary concert experience. Born in Canada, she has performed the premieres of more than one hundred works. She collaborates with some of the world’s most distinguished conductors and orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic. She is Principal Guest Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, she holds the positions of Associate Artist of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Première Artiste Invitée of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and in the autumn of 2026 she will take up her post as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Her exceptional artistic achievements are moreover reflected in a number of prestigious awards, among them a Grammy Award, the title Artist of the Year from Gramophone magazine, and the Polar Music Prize 2025, a Swedish international award established by music publisher and manager of ABBA Stig Anderson, which she won together with jazzman Herbie Hancock and the rock band Queen. Her Prague Spring residency will consist of four concerts.
We will fully appreciate the artist’s unique talent in the third concert of her festival residency, where she will appear not only as a singer and actress, but also as the conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. “This will be the Czech premiere of my production of Poulenc’s opera La Voix humaine, which involves live video by means of three cameras placed within the orchestra, and a large screen behind the players. The opera, with texts by Jean Cocteau, seems to be the final conversation between a woman and her (ex)lover. But the text constantly returns to the importance the woman places on fantasy, imagination, truth and lies. It becomes clear that this character needs to live in her own version of reality (as do we all…) and her isolation and emotional intensity brings the opera to a heartbreaking finish. I have paired Poulenc’s opera with Metamorphosen by Richard Strauss (1864–1949), in which we see the emotional landscape as the Second World War was coming to its end,” Barbara Hannigan tells us. Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings, completed on 12 April 1945, is a late, immensely personal work by the then 81-year-old composer, sometimes described as Strauss’s epitaph of a German culture destroyed by war. The piece, most likely inspired by Goethe’s poem Niemand wird sich selber kennen (No-one will ever know himself), ends with a quotation of Marcia funebre from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, beneath which, on the final page of his autograph, Strauss wrote the words “In memoriam!”
Program and cast
26 May 2026
Programme
Richard Strauss: Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings
Francis Poulenc: La Voix humaine, one-act opera for soprano and orchestra
Performers
Czech Philharmonic
Barbara Hannigan – soprano, conductor
2 June 2026
Programme
Charles Ives: The Unanswered Question
Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 45 in F sharp minor “Farewell” Hob. I:45
Arnold Schönberg: Transfigured Night Op. 4
George Gershwin: Girl Crazy, suite from the musical (arr. Bill Elliott)
Performers
Czech Philharmonic
Barbara Hannigan – soprano, conductor
Rudolfinum
The Rudolfinum, one of the most noteworthy buildings in Prague, was built between 1876 and 1884 according to the designs of architects Josef Zítek and Josef Schulze. Originally intended as a multipurpose cultural building in Prague, the Rudolfinum was inagurated on February 7, 1885. It carried out its mission until 1919, when it was converted to the House of Commons of the Czechoslovak Republic. Concert activity was restored to the Rudolfinum during the German occupation, but full rehabilitation, particularly of the gallery, did not take place until 1992. After a general reconstruction by architect Karel Prager in 1992, the Rudolfinum became the home of the Czech Philharmonic and the Rudolfinum Gallery.
Dvorana – Ceremony Hall
The central space in the gallery portion of the Rudolfinum was designed by Josef Zítek and Josef Schulz as an entrance hall to the art gallery. After 1918, however, this space was converted into a parliamentary cafeteria, and after World War II it served as a gymnasium for the Prague Conservatory. At the end of the 1980s, Ceremony Hall was threatened with reconstruction – but plans to tear down the main staircase to make room for another concert hall did not go through, and the hall retained its original appearance. Of particular interest in Ceremony Hall are 25 empty spaces on its walls, which were originally intended to be filled in with frescos. The majority of the eminent Czech painters, however, boycotted the 1891 fresco competition in protest over the large number of German artists involved in the construction of the Rudolfinum.
Dvořák Hall
The Czech Philharmonic took the stage in this world-famous concert hall in 1896, performing for its first-ever concert under the baton of Antonín Dvořák himself. The hall remained a space for concerts and performances until 1918, at which time it became a boardroom for the new parliament of the Czechoslovak Republic. The stage and the organ loft became a tribunal (garnished with a statue of President T.G. Masaryk), from which parliamentary leaders presided over proceedings. The hall's original character (and purpose) was restored
in 1940–1942 according to a project conceived by Antonín Engel and Bohumír Kozák, and it has remained in this form through to the present. In accordance with Josef Zítek and Josef Schulz's original proposal, the central visual element in the hall is an organ, which was made in Frankfurt, Germany. During the hall's stint as a parliamentary meeting place, the organ was housed in Brno. When it returned to the Rudolfinum in 1940, its register was extended. Dvořák Hall's final update took place in 1992 when the entire Rudolfinum building underwent reconstruction.
When travelling by public transport, get off at the Staroměstská metro station (Line A), tram stop (trams nos. 17, 18 and 53) or bus stop (no. 207).
Parking is available at the underground parking facility on Jan Palach Square. The facility is not part of the Rudolfinum premises.
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