New Palace Opera is thrilled to dip our toes into the world of Leos Janacek, with a concert performance of Katya Kabanova on 19 July 2026 at 6.30pm, St John’s in Waterloo, London. The performance will be sung in English.
Tickets are now on sale here for Katya Kabanova. We have our usual early-bird discount that runs until the end of June, so save yourselves a fiver and get a date in your diary.
Returning to us as Katya is Philippa Boyle, our Ellen Orford from last year, who has just received rave reviews for her performance of the role in Opera North’s Peter Grimes. The rest of our upcoming cast includes many old friends, who we welcome back.
Cast:
Katerina (Katya) – Philippa Boyle
Boris Grigoryevich – James Schouten
Marfa Kabanova – Mae Heydorn
Tichon Kabanov – Jonathan Finney
Vanya Kudryash – Robin Whitehouse
Varvara – Joanna Harries
Dikoi – Ashley Mercer
Glasha – Caroline Carragher
The New Palace Opera Orchestra is conducted by Michael Thorne, the co-music director of New Palace Opera. ‘I am delighted that the stars have aligned such that New Palace Opera can turn its attention to the gold mine of masterpieces which are the Janacek operas − and even more so that we shall begin with Katya Kabanova.’
Janacek was inspired, at the age of 67, to turn the Alexander Ostrovsky play The Storm into an opera by his love for Kamila Stosslova. Both of them were married and he was almost 40 years older than she was, yet she had a profound effect on the works of his last decade. More than 700 letters stand testament to his obsession with her. In one letter, he confessed, ‘I saw for the first time how a woman can love her husband…that was the reason I took up Katya Kabanova and composed it.’
In the opera, Katya’s doomed affair with her lover Boris frames a social tragedy presided over by both an uncle and a mother-in-law from hell in which Janacek’s gorgeous music underpins the yearning nature of love every bit as well as the harsh end, which Janacek knew was the requirement of the day for those breaking the social norms expected of marriage.