Hrůša to Conduct All Four Ring Operas in One Week — SkimNews
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- Jakub Hrůša, a year into his role as Royal Opera House music director, is preparing to conduct his first Parsifal there, staged by Evgeny Titov in a production advertised as dystopian and described by the line 'What if the light is a lie?'
- Hrůša will next season conduct all four Ring operas — Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung — in the space of a single week, rather than adding them to his repertoire one by one over years as most conductors do.
- Hrůša succeeded Antonio Pappano, whose 22-year tenure was the longest and most stable in the Royal Opera House's history; Hrůša said the house has urged him to do things 'in your own way.'
- Hrůša has been chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony for the past decade and will become chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic in two seasons, a role previously held by his late teacher Jiří Bělohlávek, with whom he studied from age 18.
- The Royal Ballet and Opera sold nearly half of its tickets last season to newcomers, a figure Hrůša cited as evidence of the house's 'totally accessible, really open-arms' spirit toward new audiences.
Why it matters: The Royal Opera House is betting on Hrůša to refresh its artistic direction after Pappano's record 22-year tenure, and his plan to learn all four Ring operas simultaneously — rather than sequentially — signals a deliberately accelerated, risk-taking approach. His upcoming Czech Philharmonic post also cements a London-Prague axis for one of the most sought-after conductors of his generation.
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